ALL Excel LOOKUPs explained

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Over the years, I’ve noticed a lot of folks having trouble understanding Excel LOOKUP functions. By lookup functions, I mean LOOKUP, HLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, MATCH, and XLOOKUP.

So, in this video, I am trying to bring together what all of these lookup functions have in common. In this way, my hope is that you get a sense of the theory that comprise these functions. If you can understand the theory, then the old functions take on new meaning. Better yet, new functions like XLOOKUP make a lot more sense – and you’ll learn them in an instant.

You’ll see a lot of this in the video, but for now, let me see what I can summarize in this writing.
All Excel lookup functions follow this same framework. Let’s take a look at the VLOOKUP function:

VLOOKUP( what_we’re_searching_for, where_we’re_going_to_look, column_number_to_pull, the_match_type)

Now, let’s replace the following parameters from our VLOOKUP with symbols
🔎 = what_we’re_searching_for
🗄️ = where_we’re_going_to_look
… = column_number_to_pull
❓ = the_match_type

…and let’s put them back into our lookup:

VLOOKUP( 🔎, 🗄️, …, ❓)

Let’s consider “…” to refers to any optional parameter that is part of a lookup. And now let’s extend this idea…

The MATCH function, which returns the record location where a value is matched within a row or column follows a similar dynamic:

MATCH( what_we’re_searching_for, where_we’re_going_to_look, the_match_type)
… and we can assign the symbols as follows….
🔎 = what_we’re_searching_for
🗄️ = where_we’re_going_to_look
❓ = the_match_type

MATCH( 🔎, 🗄️, ❓)

In fact, we can summarize ALL excel lookup functions with the following axioms:
1. The first parameter 🔎 is always what you’re looking for
2. The second parameter 🗄️ is always where you’re going to look
3. The third parameter … represents additional options specific to that lookup type (MATCH has no options; VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP have options; XLOOKUP does as well, we’ll get to that in a second)
4. The final parameters(s) ❓ is/are always the match type(s)
Which means all Excel lookups following this generalized form:
LOOKUP( 🔎, 🗄️, …, ❓