From the course: Mastering Lookup Functions in Excel: Seven Powerful Formulas

What are lookup functions? - Microsoft Excel Tutorial

From the course: Mastering Lookup Functions in Excel: Seven Powerful Formulas

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What are lookup functions?

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- Before we dive into the most common lookup functions, let's start with a question. What exactly is a lookup function? A lookup function, kind of what it sounds like. It allows you to look up a value based off of specific inputs. So perhaps you have a profit and loss and you want to look up the value for a specific account in a specific period. Or perhaps you have an order list and you want to understand the details of a specific order, like the product name that corresponds to the specific ID. To solve those, you would need to use a lookup function. While there are many options available, we'll soon see that not all lookup functions are created equally, and each has their benefits and shortcomings. Before we begin, here are some things that I look at when considering the best lookup function to use. First, how simple is it to understand and use? Some lookup functions are shorter than others and some are more simple with their syntax. Next, how flexible and dynamic is the lookup function? My favorite lookup functions allow me to choose between looking up a value vertically, horizontally, or ideally both. One more before we begin as it relates to match types. Match types are a common part of lookup functions and allow us to either find an exact match or an approximate match. Exact matches are what they sound like. They will find your exact match or return an error. An approximate match behaves a bit differently and is mainly used whenever you're dealing with numbers. If Excel can't find an exact match, it will find the next closest value to that exact match. In this course, we're going to want to be extra safe, and because of that we'll only be using exact matches. Okay, enough of a preview. Let's start having some fun by diving into our first lookup function. The famous VLOOKUP.

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