Excel puzzler

beefcarrot

by heck but that's complicated! I may well take you up on that offer.

Gorgeous_George

Lookup only works if the lists are in ascending order, IIRC.



GG

beefcarrot

Thank you for all the information! I can't believe it was so stupid. Basically, I had written the children's name first name first, then last name. I had sorted by last name to sort things out. Basically, had I sorted by the first name, all this could have been solved. Case closed - many thanks for all your help everyone!

Fairwinds

As Chippy said, as you are wanting an exact match, you really should have a fourth argument in your formula of 0 or false. If you have this the list doesn't need to be sorted at all.

At present if you look up a name that isn't in the list, it will return the results for the nearest name alphabetically rather that alert you to no match.