VLOOKUP the last value

VLOOKUP is one of the most useful Excel functions. So much so that I even wrote a book about it. But it has one serious limitation.

It looks up the first occurrence and returns corresponding data.

What if you want to find the last value?

Say, for example, you are looking at a task assignment list and want to know what is the last task assigned to employee Emp13?

We want to extract the task “Make amazing workbook”. Of course our good old VLOOKUP stops once it finds Emp13 and returns the answer as “Create intuitive workbook”.

Let’s learn the formulas required to lookup last value.

VLOOKUP last value

Although I said VLOOKUP last value, we can’t use VLOOKUP formula to do this. Not unless we add a helper column to the original data (or come up with a long array formula version of VLOOKUP). So, instead we are going to use other Excel formulas to find the answer.

2 parts of the problem

There are 2 parts of the find last value problem.

1. Find the position of last occurrence of given employee (for ex. Emp13’s position would be 5
2. Return corresponding details (task description, due date or completion status)

Let’s attack each part.

1. Finding the last occurrence position

First take a look at the array formula.

=MAX(ROW(tasks[Employee])*(tasks[Employee]=lookup.value)) - ROW(tasks[[#Headers]])

Remember to press Ctrl+Shift+Enter after typing this.

This array formula returns the position of lookup.value in the list.

How does this formula work?

Let’s go inside out.

(tasks[Employee]=lookup.value) portion:

This will return a bunch of TRUE / FALSE values by checking each item of tasks[Employee] list against lookup.value.

For lookup.value=Emp13, we get below array:

{FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;TRUE;TRUE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE}

ROW(tasks[Employee])  portion:

This will return a bunch of running numbers starting with row number of first item in the tasks[Employee] list.

For our data, we get this:

{5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34}

ROW(tasks[Employee])*(tasks[Employee]=lookup.value) portion:

This just multiplies the row number array with boolean values, returning an array with 0s for all row numbers except where we have lookup.value as Employee. For lookup.value=Emp13, we get this:

{0;0;0;8;9;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;0}

MAX (ROW(..) * (...)) portion:

This will tell us the maximum row number where lookup.value occurs in tasks[Employee] list.

So we get 9 as answer.

MAX (...) -  ROW(tasks[[#Headers]]) portion:

As our data doesn’t begin on row 1, we need to subtract the header row position from MAX(…) result. To get the header row number, we are using ROW(tasks[#Headers])

In the end we get the result as 5.

Let’s assume this result is in a cell named last.lookup

2. Return corresponding details

Now that we know the position of last lookup value, we can use INDEX formula to get corresponding details.

So to get the task description, we can use =INDEX(tasks[Task], last.lookup)

And to get the due date, we can use =INDEX(tasks[Due by date],last.lookup)

A twist – VLOOKUP latest value

Now, time for a twist. What if you want to find the latest value by looking at another column like Due by date. In other words, we want to find the latest task for Emp13.

That is your homework. Go ahead and figure out the formula. Once you have answer, post it in comments.

Download VLOOKUP last value example workbook

Please click here to download VLOOKUP last value example workbook. Examine the formulas to understand this technique.

PS: You can find one solution for this problem in downloadable workbook.

More creative ways to lookup your data

• Ultimate VLOOKUP tip – multi-condition lookups
• How to get VLOOKUP + 1 value
• 2 Way lookups – lookup matching row & column values
• VLOOKUP 2nd value
• VTALKUP – A podcast on VLOOKUP and other lookup formulas