Page 428 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

410 Lookup and Reference
Looking up a single value with VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP
The most popular of the lookup functions are HLOOKUP (for Horizontal Lookup) and VLOOKUP (for Vertical Lookup) functions. These functions are located on the Lookup & Reference drop-down menu on the Formulas tab
of the Ribbon as well as in the Lookup & Reference category in the Insert Function dialog box. They are part of a powerful group of functions that can return values by looking them up in data tables.
The VLOOKUP function searches vertically (from top to bottom) the leftmost column of a Lookup table until the program locates a value that matches or exceeds the one you are looking up. The HLOOKUP function searches hori- zontally (from left to right) the topmost row of a Lookup table until it locates a value that matches or exceeds the one that you’re looking up.
The VLOOKUP function uses the following syntax:
VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,col_index_num,[range_lookup]) The HLOOKUP function follows the nearly identical syntax: HLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,row_index_num,[range_lookup])
In both functions, the lookup_value argument is the value that you want to look up in the Lookup table, and table_array is the cell range or name of the Lookup table that contains both the value to look up and the related value to return.
The col_index_num argument in the VLOOKUP function is the number of the column whose values are compared to the lookup_value argument in a vertical table. The row_index_num argument in the HLOOKUP function is the number of the row whose values are compared to the lookup_value in a horizontal table.
When entering the col_index_num or row_index_num arguments in the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions, you must enter a value greater than zero that does not exceed the total number of columns or rows in the Lookup table.
The optional range_lookup argument in both the VLOOKUP and the HLOOKUP functions is the logical TRUE or FALSE that specifies whether you want Excel to find an exact or approximate match for the lookup_value in the table_array. When you specify TRUE or omit the range_lookup argument in the VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP function, Excel finds an approximate match. When you specify FALSE as the range_lookup argument, Excel finds only exact matches.