We all know that VLOOKUP can find first match and return the results. But what if you want to VLOOKUP multiple matches? Use this simple trick instead.
Multiple matches in Excel lookups
The problem is simple as illustrated below. Say you have a bunch of dates & locations. You want to find out corresponding date(s) for a location. If you use either VLOOKUP or INDEX+MATCH, you just get the first date, but you want them all.
In new version of Excel (2019), you can use awesome formulas like FILTER() to do exactly this, but most of us are still stuck in older version of Excel. So how to get all the matches?
The trick – Use TEXTJOIN…
TEXTJOIN is a text combining function available on Excel 365. We can it to solve our multiple matches problem.
Let’s say our data is in a table named plan. We want to lookup the location in cell G7 and return all matching dates.
We can use below TEXTJOIN formula (you must press Ctrl+Shift+Enter) to get result as this is an array formula.
=TEXTJOIN(", ",TRUE, IF(plan[Location]=G7,
TEXT(plan[Date],"dddd dd-mmm"),""))
How this multiple match formula works?
Let’s go from inside out.
- IF(plan[Location]=G7 this part checks every location in the plan table and returns a bunch of TRUE or FALSE values. The end result would be an array like this. {FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; TRUE;TRUE;TRUE; FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE}
- TEXT(plan[Date], “dddd dd-mmm”) this part takes all the dates in plan table and converts them to dddd dd-mmm format (ie 18/05/2019 becomes Saturday 18-May). The end result would be another array of dates formatted.
- IF(plan[Location]=G7, TEXT(plan[Date],”dddd dd-mmm”),””) this entire IF formula results in either a bunch of formatted dates or blanks, based on whether plan[Location] matches G7 or not. So we get something like this. {“”;””;””;””;””;””;””;””;”Saturday 18-May”;”Sunday 19-May”;”Monday 20-May“;””;””;””;””;””;””;””;””}
- TEXTJOIN(“, “,TRUE, IF()) this is the final part of the puzzle. TEXTJOIN takes individual bits of the array in #3 and combines them with delimiter , (comma space) but ignores any blanks (TRUE as second parameter). The final result is one text that goes like – Saturday 18-May, Sunday 19-May, Monday 20-May
Why bother with TEXT(plan[Date], “dddd dd-mmm”)?
If you don’t use TEXT() to convert your dates, you get something like this instead – 43603, 43604, 43605. This is because Excel dates are really just numbers. So when you use them in any formula you just get the underlying number value. This is why TEXT() formula is so helpful.
Related: Top 10 tips for working with Excel date & time values.
Still confused? Multiple Matches in Excel – Trick
Not sure how all of this works? Check out below video to understand this trick in detail. You can also watch this on my YouTube channel.
Download VLOOKUP Multiple Matches workbook
I made an example workbook with this formula technique. Click here to download or see this in action online here.
HELP! I don’t have TEXTJOIN()
As mentioned earlier, TEXTJOIN is available in Excel 365 or 2019 + only. So if you are using an older version of Excel, you should use one of the below techniques to get multiple matches.
And yeah, while you are polishing your lookup saw, why not also read these..
How do you multiple match?
Do you use TEXTJOIN() or something else? Or do you just give up after first match? Please share your lookup tricks in the comments box.
29 Responses to “Customer Service Dashboard using Excel [Dashword Week]”
Looks good, Mara. Keep up the good work!
Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations...
wow ! Great stuff Mara !!
I am amazed on the work you did !
What I like about your dashboard
1. The first impression is the colors used. Very smart use of colors that matches each other, easy on the eye - make people wants to find out more !
2. Clear message shown for the tweetboard for Quick overview on the state of situation.
3. Use of creative titles for your charts "Information Desk".
4. Clear and uncluttered charts. Gives reader a clear perspective with good use of charts colors too.
5. Good use of Legend to describe what color meant "Highest Sales out of the three months"
6. Of course, good use of Check boxes and Slider bar to offer interactiveness on your charts.
Suggestions
1. You may want to consider formatting your Y and X axis labels to show thousands, in $500K format instead of $500,000, so you can even made your chart look much neater.
2. Budget Variant Chart - This one is special...I took a second look and try to understand it. I am not sure if this is the best chart to visualize Sales VS Budget and Variances. And the Variance of 16.19% is positive, so u may want to use conditional formatting to make it green color, red if negative.
Overall is Great Work and Great Effort !!! Keep it up and I am so proud of you !
Francis Chin
http://www.francischin.com
Great Work Maya, just wondering if "5" Scrollable list of various gift shop items, can compare the previous 2 and current month selected in the above picklist, just one more suggestion if we can use top 5 gift category by using donut and bar mix chart to show sales mix for different months
Chandoo I would like to thank you for posting such helpful tricks for creating dashboards, I have learned a lot from your KPI Dashboard demo, I have created one dashboard to compare performce of Sales Associates, thaks a lot again
Thanks for the idea! Great job! You are giving me a lot of inspiratons!
Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I'm such a novice at this so I was so grateful for Chandoo's class and for everyone who submits ideas on his blog.
Francis: Thanks so much for your comments. You're an inspiration. For the budget variance chart, I actually got that idea from one of Chandoo's post on budget vs actual. There was one that was simple and easy to read so I learned how to do that and made it dynamic. I'm open to any other ideas you have for budget vs actual. I'm always looking for ways to improve.
Sabrina: Thank you for you for your suggestion on the top 5.
Dear Mara,
Great work.
But i one suggestion regarding the INFORMATION DESK graph is consist of month but which year it belong is not there if it would be there it would be great.
Warm Regards
Bhushan Sabbani
+91 98208 26012
Thanks for this idea... Great Stuff !!
Excellent dashboard Mara.
The best I like about the dashboard is the choice of colors. They are cool and not distracting. Thanks for sharing the file.
@Chandoo
Thanks for the dashboard week Chandoo. I am learnt a lot in the last 2 days. I am excited over the next 3 days! 🙂
Regards,
Ravi.
Great work Mara ! Thanks for sharing .
Mara, I liked the line, "Need to be more helpful." Our government needs to print this line, laminate it and post it in all government offices for the staff to see.
Hi there, i have been recently visiting this blog it is really great, the best one for Excel, wish Chandoo great success ahead.
I have one query, if you protect the data sheet the chart with the checkbox gives and error saying the data is protected and cannot be modified, is there a way around. This is cause if we want to publish this to someone who should only see it and do no changes to the data, is it possible please guide.
This could be a silly but bear me i am novice to excel 🙂
Thanks.
nice work.
inspired me a lot, working on few dashboard projects...
[...] Customer Service Dashboard in Excel 14,326 [...]
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dear mara
looks great .any reason why you have not used the bullet chart for the actual vs target chart.on the whole it is simple and elegant .jay.
Dear Chandoo,
The word Dashboard in the heading is misspelt.
Wow. Very Nice work Mara. Next week I am going to take the Course, I will try to post my work here.
Thank you so much for your helpful blog. Always appreciated your tips and tricks.
I am proud that you belongs to our Vizag City.
The above comment, I forgot mentioned about Chandoo, those two paras is about Chandoo. 😀
Thank you Mara!
Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations…
Great Work Mara!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Chandoo,
I had been following your blogs for tips and tricks on excel. I am working with Media agency and we collect the data. Now this data has several parameters based on several legends. For eg Class A - legend color red, classB - legend color green and so on. Class A has several characteristics and parameters and heading etc. Now everytime we gather data and make pivot then based on the data in the pilot tables - top 10 we need to insert those in charts manually and also need to change the colors of legends and also. We create nearly 300 slides every month sector wise and it takes nearly our 4-5 days in doing that. Do you have any sample dashboard which will be helpfull to us and we can create it in a day.
Thanks really amazing one,
it helped me in desgining OTACE report
Regards
Gowravan M
9980651792
Awesome Job done here .............
very good master piece but wont to know if you can design KPI's for a financial institution. Thank you
I need help to make performance for our company
we have about 10 products from 5 years old