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ExcelTL's avatar
ExcelTL
Copper Contributor
Jul 30, 2020
Solved

How old is VLOOKUP?

To this day, I still get requests for help using VLOOKUP and see new blog posts teaching basic usage. Given the improvement with XLOOKUP, I'm wondering just how long VLOOKUP has been around. Excel 95...
excel
Formulas and Functions
  • JoeMcDaid's avatar
    JoeMcDaid
    Jul 30, 2020

    ExcelTL It's actually a little older, that's when it arrived in Excel.

     

    I believe VLOOKUP first appeared in Lotus 1-2-3 which predated Excel. According to Wikipedia, Lotus 1-2-3 launched in January 1983, so VLOOKUP appeared sometime around then. VLOOKUP was actually the successor to the original lookup style function, LOOKUP(), which first appeared in VisiCalc in 1979. LOOKUP was created to help with Bob Frankston's tax return. You can read about it here.

     

    LOOKUP and VLOOKUP have an amazing history, dating all the way back to the very early days of spreadsheeting. Hats off to the early spreadsheet pioneers. 

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