Excel Lookup — Free Excel Tutorial
Learn Excel Lookup in Excel with a free, beginner-friendly tutorial, examples and practice for Indian students on Syllab.in.
TL;DR: Learn Excel Lookup in Excel with a free, beginner-friendly tutorial, examples and practice for Indian students on Syllab.in.
Written & reviewed by the Syllab.in Academic Team (CBSE/NCERT subject experts) · Updated
Excel Lookup in Excel
Lookups pull a value from a table by matching a key — e.g. find a price given a product code, or a name given a roll number. VLOOKUP is the classic: `=VLOOKUP(key, table_range, column_number, FALSE)`. The final FALSE demands an exact match (almost always what you want). VLOOKUP searches the FIRST column of the table and returns a value from a column to its right.
VLOOKUP's weaknesses: it can only look to the right, and the column number breaks if you insert a column. The modern replacement is XLOOKUP: `=XLOOKUP(key, lookup_range, return_range)` — it can look left or right, and you point at the exact columns so inserting rows/columns doesn't break it. Use XLOOKUP if your Excel/Sheets supports it.
INDEX/MATCH is the powerful older alternative that also looks in any direction: `=INDEX(return_range, MATCH(key, lookup_range, 0))`. MATCH finds the position of the key; INDEX returns the value at that position. Knowing at least one robust lookup is essential for any data or office job.
Excel Lookup — Syntax
=VLOOKUP("P02", A2:C5, 3, FALSE)
=XLOOKUP("P02", A2:A5, C2:C5)
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