The Excel XLOOKUP function is a modern and flexible replacement for older functions like VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and LOOKUP. XLOOKUP supports approximate and exact matching, wildcards (* ?) for partial matches, and lookups in vertical or horizontal ranges....Read more
In this example, we have a simple worksheet that uses the XLOOKUP function to lookup the name of a U.S. state when a valid two-letter code is provided as a lookup value. The goal is to remove the #N/A error that XLOOKUP returns when it can't find a result. Although you could use the IFNA or...Read more
The goal is to look up the Title, Author, and Year in the list of books as shown using a formula based on a partial match and a wildcard. The text string to search for is entered in cell G4. All data is in an Excel Table named data in the range B5:D16. This problem can be easily solved with the...Read more
In this example, the goal is to look up amounts for 1000 invoice numbers in a table that contains 1 million invoices. The catch is that not all of the 1000 invoice numbers exist in the source data. In fact, most of the invoice numbers do not appear in column B. This means we need...Read more
In this example, the goal is to look up a price using XLOOKUP with multiple criteria. To be more specific, we want to look up a price based on Item, Size, and Color. At a glance, this seems like a difficult problem because XLOOKUP only has one value for lookup_value and lookup_array...Read more
In this example, the goal is to look up the correct shipping cost for an item based on the shipping service selected and the weight of the item. The challenge is that we also need to filter by service. This means we need to apply criteria in two steps: (1) match based on Service and (2) match...Read more
In this example, the goal is to perform a case-sensitive lookup on the color in the "Color" column. In other words, a lookup value of "RED" must return a different result from a lookup value of "Red". By default, Excel is not case-sensitive and this applies to standard lookup...Read more
In the example shown, the table in B4:C13 contains quantity-based discounts. As the quantity increases, the discount also increases. The table in E4:F10 shows the discount returned by XLOOKUP for several random quantities. XLOOKUP is configured to use the quantity in column E to find the...Read more
In the example shown, cell G4 contains the lookup value, "Berlin". XLOOKUP is configured to find this value in the table, and return the population. The formula in G5 is:
=XLOOKUP(G4,B5:B18,D5:D18) // get population
In this example, the goal is to perform a horizontal lookup to determine the correct quantity-based discount. The range G6:L7 contains quantity-based discounts. Column B contains random quantities used when testing the formula. This problem can be easily solved with the XLOOKUP function or...Read more
XLOOKUP can handle arrays natively, which makes it a very useful function when constructing criteria based on multiple logical expressions.
In the example shown, we are looking for the order number of the first order to Chicago over $250. We are constructing a lookup...Read more
For many years, INDEX and MATCH have been the go-to solution for difficult lookup problems in Excel. While more complicated to configure, the two-function combination of INDEX + MATCH is flexible and powerful. But now that...Read more
The XLOOKUP function contains built-in support for wildcards, but this feature must be enabled explicitly by setting match mode to the number 2.
In the example shown, XLOOKUP is configured to match the value entered in cell E5, which may appear...Read more
XLOOKUP offers several features that make it exceptionally good for more complicated lookups. In this example, we want the latest price for an item by date. If data were sorted by date in ascending order, this would be very straightforward....Read more
In this example, the goal is to use XLOOKUP to find the first "red" or "pink" record in the data as shown. All data is in an Excel Table named data in the range B5:E14. This means the formulas below use structured...Read more
By default, XLOOKUP will return the first match in a data set. However, XLOOKUP offers an optional argument called search_mode to control the order in which data is searched. Setting search mode to -1 causes XLOOKUP to search "last to first" or, in other words, search backwards through...Read more
Normally, the XLOOKUP function is configured to look for a value in a lookup array that exists on the worksheet. However, when the criteria used to match a value becomes more complex, you can use Boolean logic to create a lookup array on the fly composed...Read more
When XLOOKUP can't find a value in a lookup array, it returns an #N/A error. You can use the IFNA function or IFERROR function to trap this error and return a different...Read more
The goal is to look up and retrieve employee information in a table that contains unique id values in the first column. The VLOOKUP function is straightforward to use with data in this format, but you can easily use the XLOOKUP function as well. See below for a detailed explanation of both...Read more
In this example, we have a table that contains 6 columns of codes, and each row of codes belongs to a group in column B. The goal is to lookup any code in C5:H15, and return the name of the group the code belongs to. The challenge is that the code may be in any one of the six columns, and...Read more
This formula is based on the XLOOKUP function. Working from the inside out, we use the MAX function to calculate a lookup value:
MAX(values)
MAX is...Read more
The general goal is to return the first numeric value in a row or column. More specifically, in the worksheet shown, we have dates in column B and a numeric value in the range C5:C16. Notice that all of the cells in this range have numeric values. Some are blank and some contain text values. We...Read more