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Lanceb36's avatar
Lanceb36
Copper Contributor
Oct 21, 2022

Using Indirect to lookup a column value

I am attempting to access a structured reference in an Excel table by building the string with Vlookup and using Indirect to access the value.

 

=VLOOKUP([@LastUpdate],Status,2)  = [@Column2]

=INDIRECT([@Column2],)                   = #REF!

 

[@Column2] returns the date that I am after but when I use the Indirect command I get the error. It does not matter which argument I use for for Indirect (=INDIRECT([@Column2],0) or =INDIRECT([@Column2],1)

 

Any help would be appreciated

excel
Formulas and Functions

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  • mtarler's avatar
    mtarler
    Silver Contributor
    Oct 21, 2022
    as you noted, INDIRECT has 2 optional formats and neither is a table reference format.
    If possible I would avoid using INDIRECT. create the reference directly. can you share the sheet and what you are trying to do. you almost always can do it another way and then avoid that INDIRECT all together, which is a good thing because INDIRECT is a 'volatile' function that will always recalculate so in a large sheet with many INDIRECT statement it will slow excel down

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