Need some help with my Vlookup or a new idee

[Jim Brastad]

Hi 
I have a table of 16087 rows and 7 columns. and im strugling with similer names in column A and Vlookup that picks the first hit.
This is a dogbreed that have dogs with simple names and i want to pick right father/mother combinations based on age and probability to puppies. 
Now i have these lookups in place 
=VLOOKUP(D2;$A$2:$B$9;2;FALSE) "Father"
=VLOOKUP(F2;$A$2:$B$9;2;FALSE) "mother"
I have there names but i like to also add Reg nr 
my table looks like this and are sorted on "Born" the date the puppies where born :

Name	Reg_Name	Reg_Father	Father	Reg_Mother	Mother	Born
Father one	IS00000/00	#N/A	not known	#N/A	not known	12.06.1986
Mother one	IS00	#N/A	not known	#N/A	not known	12.06.1987
Father two	IS00000/01	IS00000/00	Father one	#N/A	not known	24.06.1988
Father one	IS0001/12	IS00000/00	Father one	IS00	mother one	01.01.2012
Mother two	IS0001/13	IS00000/01	Father two	IS00	mother one	01.02.2013
puppy 1	VIH 155	IS00000/00	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015
puppy 2	VIH 156	IS00000/00	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015
puppy 3	VIH 157	IS00000/00	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015

what i want is to pick the right "father_one" with the age nearest to the puppies but still older than the puppies (and with a age differanse less than 14 years had been nice to have)

Is there any functions i can combine to get this to work?

What i want is to find the "Reg_Father" and "Reg_mother" based on their name, this are values that are in the Reg_name column before the puppies are born, the problem is when at father or mother has the same name as one of their forfathers then Vlookup picks the first occurrence of that name. I want it to pick the last occurrence before the puppies was born not the first and not the last because it may appear later in the list aswell. 
so to sum it up i want:
- mother and father reg nr 
- closest to puppies born date 
- but not after they have been born
- based on mother/fathers name

br 
Jimmy

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jimmy,

I was not able to convert your text back to Excel sheet from my browser, at least for reasonable time. Here is the sample which illustrates the idea

Entire formula to find Reg No is

=INDEX($C$3:$C$10,MATCH(AGGREGATE(14,6,1/($B$3:$B$10=$F$3)/($G$3>$D$3:$D$10)*$D$3:$D$10,1),$D$3:$D$10,0))

Here AGGREGATE find the largest date in Date column for which Name=a

($B$3:$B$10=$F$3)

and date is less than Born

($G$3>$D$3:$D$10)

You may add here more criteria if needed.

MATCH find position of that date in Date column and INDEX returns Reg No for that position.

Please see attached.

[#3]

Thank you for a good solution but it works only if there are just one dog with the same birthdate as father/mother dog if there are more than one dog with taht birthdate then it returns the first "REG" number and not the actuale regnr of the dog. 

this are my formulas now:

=INDEX($B$2:$B$16088;MATCH(AGGREGATE(14;6;1/($A$2:$A$16088=$D2)/($G2>$G$2:$G$16088)*$G$2:$G$16088;1);$G$2:$G$16088;0))
=INDEX($B$2:$B$16088;MATCH(AGGREGATE(14;6;1/($A$2:$A$16088=$F2)/($G2>$G$2:$G$16088)*$G$2:$G$16088;1);$G$2:$G$16088;0))

But i have scaled it down a little in the excel sheet that i have uploaded here so you can see my dilemma 

Name	Reg_Name	Reg_Father	Father	Reg_Mother	Mother	Born
Father one	IS00000/00	#NUM!	not known	#NUM!	not known	12.06.1986
mother one	IS00	#NUM!	not known	#NUM!	not known	12.06.1987
Father two	IS00000/01	IS00000/00	Father one	#NUM!	not known	24.06.1988
Father two	IS0001/12	IS00000/00	Father one	#NUM!	not known	01.01.2012
Father one	IS0002/12	IS00000/00	Father one	IS00	mother one	01.01.2012
mother two	IS0001/13	IS0001/12	Father two	IS00	mother one	01.02.2013
puppy 1	VIH 155	IS0001/12	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015
puppy 2	VIH 156	IS0001/12	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015
puppy 3	VIH 157	IS0001/12	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015
puppy 4	VIH 158	IS0001/12	Father one	IS0001/13	mother two	01.04.2015

as you see here it actually picks the reg nr for "Father two" even it is the "father one" who is the criteria 

Can i solv this in a way? Else the formula works good much better than what i had before. 

br 

Jimmy

[#4]

Hi Jim,

I din't took into account you have a lot of puppies born at the same date. Adjusted formula is

=IFERROR(INDEX($B$2:$B$11,MATCH(1,INDEX((AGGREGATE(14,6,1/($A$2:$A$11=$D2)/($G2>$G$2:$G$11)*$G$2:$G$11,1)=$G$2:$G$11)*($D2=$A$2:$A$11),0,1),0)), "no match")

Please see attached

[#5]

Thank you so much that did the trick and helped me a long way towards the final goal of making a familytree ;) 

[#6]

If I understand your issue correctly, you have an issue with the VLOOKUP Function discriminating between duplicate or similar names. Try making a new column an Concatenate the Name and the Date in question. Something like  "Smokey_1965" and then use the VLOOKUP Function on the new column. Hope this works :)