👨💻 Me: VLOOKUP searches vertically down columns (great for column-based data like employee lists), while HLOOKUP searches horizontally across rows (ideal for row-based setups like category headers).
✔ Key Differences:
– VLOOKUP: Looks for a value in the first column of a range, returns from the same row in a specified column—syntax:
=VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_lookup]). Use for vertical data; e.g., find salary by ID in a table. – HLOOKUP: Looks for a value in the first row of a range, returns from the same column in a specified row—syntax:
=HLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, row_index_num, [range_lookup]). Use for horizontal data; e.g., pull metrics by month across a header row.📌 Example:
Vertical sales table (IDs in col A, amounts in B): VLOOKUP(ID, A:B, 2, FALSE) gets amount.
Horizontal (months in row 1, sales in row 2): HLOOKUP("Jan", 1:3, 2, FALSE) gets Jan sales.
💡 VLOOKUP's more common (90% of lookups), but both support exact (FALSE) or approx (TRUE) matches—switch to XLOOKUP in modern Excel for bidirectional flexibility!
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