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Excel offers a powerful suite of lookup functions to help you find and retrieve specific data within your spreadsheets. However, navigating these options can be tricky. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know, based on my experience helping users like you master Excel’s data retrieval capabilities.
Let’s explore the strengths and limitations of these functions, presented in a way that’s easy to digest.
| Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|
|
Returns all matching values. |
Lacks backward compatibility with versions of Excel released before 2021. |
|
The return array can be to the left, right, above, or below the filtered array. |
Returns a dynamic array, meaning it can’t be used in an excel table. |
|
Works with single or multiple filtering criteria. |
Returns a zero if a source cell is blank or null. |
|
Has a straightforward syntax as it doesn’t require search or match types or modes. |
|
|
Works with vertical and horizontal datasets. |
|
|
Lets you specify a no-match value. |
Although not strictly lookup functions, Excel’s CHOOSECOLS and CHOOSEROWS functions are ideal if you want to quickly extract specific columns or rows from your data. I’ve found these particularly useful when dealing with large datasets where you only need a subset of the information.
