Lookup Functions
Advanced
INDEX-MATCH Combination
Use INDEX and MATCH functions together for flexible lookups.
Task:
You need to look up employee salaries based on their names. Use INDEX-MATCH combination to find salaries, which offers more flexibility than VLOOKUP.
Learning Objectives:
- Master INDEX-MATCH combination
- Understand flexible lookup techniques
- Practice advanced data retrieval
Hints
Solve without hints for +5 XP
The data in this exercise
This is the grid you start with. Cell references in the task — B6, C2 — point at the row numbers and column letters below.
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Employee | Department | Salary |
| 2 | John | Sales | 55000 |
| 3 | Mary | Marketing | 62000 |
| 4 | Tom | IT | 68000 |
| 5 | Sarah | HR | 58000 |
| 6 | |||
| 7 | Lookup Employee | Found Salary | |
| 8 | Mary | ||
| 9 | Tom |
What this exercise teaches (contains the answer)
INDEX-MATCH is more versatile than VLOOKUP because it can look up values in any direction and the lookup column doesn't need to be the first column.