Is Vlookup Really a Powerful Formula?
VLOOKUP may save you tons of hours instantly but keep aware that being in love with it may not be a good idea. Don’t be trapped trying to use it in complex lookups which is not able to work with. VLOOKUP was designed with a purpose in mind, it has several limitations you must know. Let’s start with the shortcomings list so you decide for yourself: • VLOOKUP exact match searches on a left index column. Why left? Databases tables have the key column on the left so I assume they consider this in the design. (INDEX and MATCH allow you to set the index column) • VLOOKUP exact match does not retrieve the location of the found value in terms or row, column or cell reference. This data is crucial in some applications, for example: when you want to use adjacent data or take decisions about what to do next according to the location of the value. The function MATCH retrieves the row number of the value found • VLOOKUP exact match only retrieves the first occurrence. This is especially dangerous w
