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Excel HLOOKUP Practice Question: Use the row number in column B (2 is Sales, 3 is Profit) to look up the month…

By Rinkesh Shah, founder of Cellgrids.

The question

Use the row number in column B (2 is Sales, 3 is Profit) to look up the month in the table A1:E3. Put the results in C6 to C8.

The data

	A	B	C	D	E
1	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May
2	100	150	120	180	90
3	20	30	25	40	15
4
5	Month	Row	Value
6	Jan	2	?
7	Jan	3	?
8	Apr	3	?

The yellow cells are where your answer goes.

Show answer

Expected results:

C6 = 100
C7 = 20
C8 = 40

How it works

Explanation: The row index of HLOOKUP can come from a cell, so one formula can return different rows of the table.
Syntax: =HLOOKUP(A6,$A$1:$E$3,B6,FALSE)
Jan with row 2 gives the sales 100. Jan with row 3 gives the profit 20. Apr with row 3 gives 40.

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HLOOKUP syntax

=HLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, row_index_num, [range_lookup])

Like VLOOKUP but searches across the first row and pulls a value down a column. Pulling a specific month's figure from a report laid out horizontally instead of in columns. Full HLOOKUP guide.