Here is a question someone asked me in a class recently.
I know how to use VLOOKUP to find a value based on search term. But I have a slight variation to it. I need to extract value below the cell VLOOKUP finds.
This is simpler than it sounds.
We can use INDEX + MATCH formulas to do this.
The syntax is like below:
=INDEX( value column, MATCH (search what, search column, 0) + 1 )
Why it works?
MATCH formula finds the position of what you are searching. By adding 1 to it and extracting the corresponding “values column”, we can get VLOOKUP + 1 value.
Homework for you
If you think finding VLOOKUP+1 is easy then I have a challenge for you.
Find the last match. Lets say in a table you have multiple items matching lookup value. How would you find the last item. Assume what you are finding is in A1, list is in C1:D20 and we want the value in 2nd column.
Go ahead and post your answers in comments section.
8 Responses to “Introducing PHD Sparkline Maker – Dead Simple way to Create Excel Sparklines”
This looks like it could be very useful for a project I'm putting together right now, thank you so much. Quick & silly question, how do I copy & paste the sparkline as a picture?
Question answered. For anyone else:
Select chart>Hold Shift key & select Edit/Copy Picture>Paste
[...] more information about PHD Sparkline Maker, please read this article and to learn more about Sparklines, read this article from Microsoft Excel 2010 blog. Also there [...]
Am I right in thinking that the y-axis is set automatically by excel?
That makes it possible to get the column chart not to start at zero.
Andy - yes, it is currently set to 'auto', which defaults to a zero base for positive values, but you can change that by left-clicking the chart, then choosing (in Excel 2007):
"Chart Tools/Layout/Axes/Primary Vertical Axis/More Primary Vertical Axis Options"
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: When manually editing a chart's minimum/maximum axis values, PLEASE be sure there's a valid reason and that doing so won't skew the message shown by the data (e.g. by exaggerating differences). If in doubt, go back and read Tufte. (W.W.T.D.?)
[...] gridlines, axis, legend, titles, labels etc.) and resize it so that it fits nicely in a cell [example]. This is the easiest and cleanest way to get sparklines in earlier versions of excel. However this [...]
thanks for the work creating the template!!!!
looks good