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Excel MATCH Practice Question: The Cumulative column only goes up. Using MATCH with approximate match, find…

By Rinkesh Shah, founder of Cellgrids.

The question

The Cumulative column only goes up. Using MATCH with approximate match, find the position of the last day on which the cumulative collection did not exceed the target in E2, and put it in F2.

The data

	A	B	C	E	F
1	Day	Daily	Cumulative	Target	Last day
2	1	300	300	1000	?
3	2	250	550
4	3	400	950
5	4	200	1150
6	5	350	1500
7	6	500	2000
8	7	300	2300

The yellow cell is where your answer goes.

Show answer

Answer in F2: 3

How it works

Explanation: With match type 1, MATCH finds the last value that is less than or equal to the target. That works because the cumulative column is sorted ascending.
Syntax: =MATCH(E2,C2:C8,1)
The target is 1000. Cumulative values up to 1000 are 300, 550 and 950. The last of these is the 3rd, so the answer is 3.

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MATCH syntax

=MATCH(lookup_value, lookup_array, [match_type])

Finds the position of a value within a range — usually paired with INDEX. Finding exactly where a value sits in a list, so INDEX can pull the matching row. Full MATCH guide.