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Say Goodbye to VLOOKUP, and Hello to INDEX-MATCH

by Ben Klopfer | Oct 10, 2012 | Microsoft | 112 comments

VLOOKUP is a powerful and much-used Excel function. If youre not familiar, it nds a lookup value in a table and returns
the corresponding value of another column. This is great for looking up information by reference. In the example image
above, Name is the lookup value, and it returns the matching Salary. If you are a power Excel user, you are likely very
familiar with this function. If not, heres how it works:

=VLOOKUP(Lookup_value, Table_array, Col_index_num, Range_lookup))

Lookup_value The value you want to nd in the lookup value column

Lookup_value The table range containing columns for both the lookup and return values
Col_index_num The index number for the column containing the return values
Range_lookup The type of match: Nearest Less Than (TRUE), or Exact (FALSE) [optional]

VLOOKUP, though powerful and useful, is not without its limitations. In fact, it can be dangerous because of some
unexpected eects and behaviors. If you use VLOOKUP, please read on to learn about these issues. This equally applies to
VLOOKUPs sister function HLOOKUP (which does horizontal lookups instead of vertical lookups) and another similar
function, LOOKUP. I have provided a safer and more exible alternative lookup method, which I use virtually everywhere
in place of VLOOKUP.

First, Ill explain some of VLOOKUPs limitations:

1. Your data range is limited to a table. That means the data you are looking up has to be in a standard tabular form. You
cannot use VLOOKUP to nd a lookup value in a dierent table, sheet, or oset row. This limits the ways you can display
your data, as anything you want to lookup must be available in a standard table format in your spreadsheet.
2. VLOOKUP always searches the leftmost column of the speci ed table to nd the lookup value. Again, this limits your choices in
presenting data as lookup values always have to be to the left of the return values. This sometimes means you must have
multiple copies of tables in order, think far ahead when creating tables that might be used in lookup, or reorder columns
after the fact simply to use VLOOKUP.
3. You can only specify the return value column by index number. This means there is no way to include a static reference to
the return value column. If someone adds a column between the lookup value column and return value column, it will
break your VLOOKUP and you have to manually increase the column index number in the formulas. This is a maintenance
nightmare.
4. VLOOKUP provides a very limited approximate match feature. The only aproximate match option nds the nearest less
than value. Unless you want that type of behavior, youre out of luck and cant use it.

Now, here are some dangers of VLOOKUP:

1. By default, VLOOKUP uses approximate match. If this is how you want it to function, then great However, in many cases
you want an exact value returned. It gives no indication it is picking a closest match result. If you do not want this behavior
(which is most of the time, I have found), you remember to explicitly set the Range_lookup argument in the formula to
FALSE. Range_lookup is optional, and not a very descrive name of this feature, so it is often overlooked. This quirk is
exasperated by the second danger
2. VLOOKUP can provide false results if the table is not sorted in ascending order! This is an issue when you use the
approximate match feature, which is TRUE by default. Basically, VLOOKUP starts at the top of the table and goes down row
by row until to gets to a valie less than or equal to the lookup value. If your table is not sorted in ascending order, this can
give false results, as the formula stops processing rows immediately after nding a match.

Su ciently scared? Checking your spreadsheets for issues now?? The answer to these problems and limitations is the
INDEX-MATCH lookup method. This methods uses two functions together to provide a more safe and exible lookup
feature. Heres how each function works, independently:

INDEX returns the value at the intersection of a row and column in a given range.
Formula: =INDEX(Array, Row_num, Column_num)

Array - The range of cells

Row_num - The row to return data from
Column_num The column to return the data from [optional]

MATCH returns a position of an item in an array that matches a value.

Formula: =MATCH(Lookup_value, Lookup_array, Match_type)

Lookup_value The value you want to nd in the lookup value array

Lookup_array The range containing lookup values
Match_type Exact (0), Nearest Less Than (-1), or Nearest Greater Than (1) [optional]
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Lookup_value The value you want to nd in the lookup value array

Lookup_array The range containing lookup values
Match_type Exact (0), Nearest Less Than (-1), or Nearest Greater Than (1) [optional]

Combining the two functions, you are able to eectively beat the limitations and dangers of VLOOKUP. You can build a
lookup that allows you to specify the lookup column and return value column completely independently, and also control
of the nature of the approximate match, if not exact. The arrays are ranges and you can specic Column_num in place of
Row_num, which mean you are not limited to using columns only; this can be used in place of HLOOKUP. It still has the
approximate match feature as nearest less than by default, and carries the same sort warnings as VLOOKUP. Heres how
the combined function works:

=INDEX(Return_value_range, MATCH(Lookup_value, Lookup_value_range, Match_type))

Return_value_range - The range that holds the return values

Lookup_value The value you want to nd in the lookup value array
Lookup_value_range The range containing lookup values
Match_type Exact (0), Nearest Greater Than (-1), or Nearest Less Than (1)

Enjoy, and use in good health!

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