09/01/2021
It’s a great start in this new year 2021. A great news for Excel Users. Microsoft Excel 2016/ 2019, Office 365 now boasts a powerful successor to the VLOOKUP function – XLOOKUP formula. Think of XLOOKUP as VLOOKUP 2.0 – A Sequel of VLOOKUP!
What is XLOOKUP?
XLOOKUP is the newest member of Excel lookup function family.
You may already know its siblings,
VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX+MATCH, LOOKUP, etc.
XLOOKUP allows us to search for an item in a range (or table) and return matching result. In a way, it is similar to VLOOKUP, but offers so much more. When using XLOOKUP, you just provide 3 basic parameters (and 3 more optional parameters) & Excel does the rest.
• The value you are looking for
• The list where this value should be found
• The list from which you want the result
• [optional] value if not found
XLOOKUP Syntax
=XLOOKUP (what you want to look, lookup list, result list)
How is XLOOKUP better?
• XLOOKUP formula is less error prone.
• Looks up exact match by default:
• 4th parameter to support value not found scenario
• XLOOKUP offers optional parameters to search for special situations.
• It returns reference as output, not the value.
• It is so much cooler to type; you just type =XL.
A working knowledge of Excel is vital for most office based professionals today, and stronger Excel skills can open the door to new career opportunities, promotions and much more.