Forum Discussion
ExcelAt40 – Day 11: Lookup Wars – VLOOKUP vs XLOOKUP
Hello Excel fam 👋
Today’s post dives into the differences between VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP — with a visual comparison, practical tips, and even a quiz to test your lookup knowledge.
We also covered how to use XLOOKUP with IFERROR for cleaner formulas and wrapped it all up with a cheat sheet.
Would love to hear:
👉 Are you still using VLOOKUP?
👉 What’s your favorite XLOOKUP trick?
#ExcelTips #ExcelCommunity #LookupFunctions #OlufemiBuilds #ExcelAt40
1 Reply
Below the mainly highlight:
VLOOKUP
• Looks up values vertically, always searching the leftmost column of your range.
• Requires you to provide a column index number to return a value from.
• Can only search from left to right; it cannot look to the left.
• Needs to be wrapped inside an IFERROR function to handle errors cleanly.
• Is prone to breaking if columns are added or rearranged because of the fixed index.
XLOOKUP
• Can look both vertically and horizontally, more flexible.
• Instead of an index, you directly specify the return range.
• Has a built-in argument to specify what to return if the lookup value isn’t found, so no need for IFERROR.
• More robust against changes in your data layout because it refers to ranges directly.
• Supports exact, approximate, and wildcard matches natively.
