4/27/2018 6 Ways to Search Data in Excel

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Microsoft Excel is used to create spreadsheets that contain massive amounts of data. It could be a
thousand rows and a twenty- ve column data or more than that. With such big data, it becomes very
di cult to nd a particular record on basis of some criteria. All the accountants could have scratched Ads by Google

their heads o if Microsoft Excel had not provided them with the built in functions. It contains several Excel Microsoft
search functions that help you nd a particular record or its position from your data. We will look into all
these functions one by one. 2

LookUp Function: Recent Posts

It looks up a value either from a one-row or one-column range or from an array. You can search for a
particular value by using the function: Detailed Excel Keyboard Shortcut
Cheatsheets
=Lookup(Lookup_value, array)
Customize your Excel Sheets for
Where, array de nes the range of column or a row from which you want to retrieve a value.
Printing

HLookUp Function: 5 Ways to Increment the Cell

HLookup Function is a broader approach of the basic lookup function. It nds a value in the top row of a Values in Excel
table or array of values and returns the value in the same column from a row you specify. It has the
syntax:
6 Ways to Search Data in Excel
=HLookUp(lookup_value, table_array, row_index_num, range_lookup)

Where, Handy Database Functions in Excel

2013
Lookup value is the rst value of the column.
Table array describe the range of cells covering data set.
Row index number is the row number from which you want to return the result.
False means that the HLookUp function won’t search for the exact match.

Consider the following example,

=HLOOKUP(B6,A6:E11,3,FALSE)

With this formula, we are extracting the value of 3rd row in the B column which starts from B6. A6:E11
contains our complete data.

VLookUp Function:
VLookup function is very commonly used for the search purposes. It searches the column from left to
right but can not reverse its direction. It helps you to lookup a speci c value in the left most columns,
and then it will return a value from the same row from the column you specify. For example, in our data
set we enter the ID and we can retrieve any attribute of that employee like name, city or salary. The
formula is similar to HLookUp. However, we do not mention the top value of any column here. It has
four arguments:

lookup_value: the value to be searched

table_array: data set on which you want to perform search.
col_index_num: the index of your column. For example, ‘Name of manager’ has index 2.
range_lookup: it can be true or false. True means that the function searches for an exact match of
the value.

You can make a simple widget using the VLookUp function which takes the ID as input and displays all
information of that person. We have used ‘If’ function which checks that the widget does not display any
result if the ID cell is empty. All the attributes Manager Name, City, Salary and Pro t are using the same
formula (as the one displayed in the formula bar) with a di erence in Column Index. It is 2 for manager
name, 3 for city, 4 for salary and 5 for the pro t; the rest remains the same.

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Index Function:
Index function returns a value of the cell at the intersection of particular row and column. It gives you a
speci c item/value from a speci c position and a speci c column. For example, you can nd what the
sixth item is in the second column with the help of index.

It has easy to understand syntax: Index (array, row_num, column_num)

Where,

Array is the range of cells on which you will perform the search. It could be your entire data set.
Row_num and Column_num are the row number and the column number from which the value
would be returned.

We applied the Index function in a separate worksheet and our data sheet is entitled as ‘bank data’. We
wanted to nd the third element in the eighth row.

1-      Select the cell and type “=INDEX()”.

2-      The rst argument is your entire data set which is A6:E11 in our case.

3-      The eighth row occupied the cell range A8 to E8.

4-      The last argument is the column number.

5-          Note that ‘bank data’ is the name of sheet from where we are extracting information. If we are
using a single sheet to maintain the data and use Index function, we will give the cell references only.

6-      Your formula will resemble this:

=INDEX(‘bank data’!A6:E11,’bank data’!A8:E8,3)

7-      Press Enter and see the result.

 Match Function:
It returns the position of a value that matches a speci ed value. However, if you have several
occurrences of the look up value, then it will return the position of rst occurrence only. It has three
arguments:

Lookup_value: this is the value that will be matched against existing record. You may give a constant
here or cell reference that contains the value.
Lookup_array: It is the column which will contain the look up values.
Match_type: It describes whether you want an exact match, greater or lesser than look up value
represented by numbers 0, 1 and -1 respectively.

The procedure of using the formula is the same as that of Index function. Now, you may easily observe
that we referred the cell in the look up value parameter. ‘bank data’!D6:D11 is the column range or the
look up array. ‘0’ indicates that we need an exact match for the value in B4. Press enter and it returns
the position ‘2’ of the value ’40,000’.

DGet Function:
DGet function is categorized in the database functions. It is used to extract a single value from the
database on basis of certain criteria. It has three parameters: database, eld and criteria.

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4/27/2018 6 Ways to Search Data in Excel
You will mention the cell range covering database in the rst parameter. Field is the column name or
number from where you want to retrieve record. Criteria contain two cells (the column name and its
value) which will be used to lter the information from entire database.

For example, the formula DGET(A4:E11,3,F4:F5) returned Faislabad as the result.

How to use Functions Together:

As we have seen that VLookUp function works with many limitations. Similarly, we could not derive any
important results using the Index or Match functions. You will be amused to know how we can combine
two functions of Index and Match to make a more powerful combination. This combination will
overcome the limitations of VLookUp function.

Our technique is to return the index of a particular value using the Match formula. This result will be
passed into the Index which will retrieve the value from that position. It will give us the following
formula:

=Index(array, Match(search value, search column, 0))

Consider the following example, I wanted to know the ‘Name of Manager’ in ‘Karachi City’. Vlookup fails
here because it can not go from right to left. Index function needs the exact row position from where
the record is to be extracted. So, we used the Match function to give us the row position.

Match(“Karachi”,C6:C11,0)

Where, C6:C11 is the array of city.

It will return the row number of Karachi which is passed as parameter in index. This row number is
searched against the particular ‘Name of Manager’ column. So, our nal formula becomes:

=Index (B6:B11, Match(“Karachi”,C6:C11,0) )

Where, B6:B11 refers to the Name of Manager column.

Note that that the column_num parameter in Index function is optional.

Let’s keep it till here for today. In our upcoming posts, we will discuss the problems that one may come
across using these functions and how to overcome them.

Till then, Stay tuned!

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