ForAngelsOnly Archive: Re: [FAO] What is the hlookup in Excel sheet

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Re: [FAO] What is the hlookup in Excel sheet

The Excel Hlookup function is used to look for specified data in the first row of a table of data. Once found it will return a result, from the same column, a specified number of rows down from the first row. The syntax for Hlookup is:

=Hlookup(lookup_value,table_array,row_index_num,range_lookup)

It is used in the following manner:

=Hlookup("Dog",$A$1:$E$1000,3,False)

Note the use of False as the optional range_lookup Argument. This tells the Hlookup to find an exact match and is most often needed when looking for a text match. If this is omitted, or True, you will may get unwanted results when searching for text that is in an unsorted row of data. This means that when True is used, or the range_lookup Argument is omitted, your data should be sorted (by the first row) in ascending order.

The use of True, or range_lookup Argument is omitted, is most often used when looking at numeric data that resides in the first row of your table of data.

HLOOKUP Example

	A	B	C
1	Amount	Name	Age
2	$256.95	Bill	56
3	$125.63	Joe	22
4	$25.66	Mary	59
5	$548.00	Dave	21
6	$489.32	Frank	48
7	$500.25	Sue	19
8	$368.59	Hillary	15
9	$901.56	Kate	25
10	$99.95	Aleisha	33

If we were to use:

=HLOOKUP("Name",$A$1:$C$10,2,False)

The use of False as the range_lookup Argument forces Hlookup to search all values on row 1 and only stop when it finds an exact match. If an exact match does not exist we get the #N/A! error.

How to stop the #N/A! error when using Hlookup

One very common question asked by Excel users is "How can I stop Hlookup returning #N/A! when it cannot find my data?". There are a few ways this can be done, unfortunately the most popular way is also the least efficient. This is to use the ISNA function as shown below:

=IF(ISNA(Hlookup("Accounts",$A$1:$F$1000,2,False)),"",Hlookup("Accounts",$A$1:$F$1000,2,False))

The use of the ISNA function like this will force Excel to perform the Hlookup twice if the value does exist, which is most often the case. This can become a problem by slowing down Excel's recalculation time. A slightly better options is:

=IF(COUNTIF($A$1:$F$1,"Accounts"),Hlookup("Accounts",$A$1:$F$10000,2,False),"")

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