The title of this post is slightly misleading. We will not be using vlookup to return the corresponding result of the last condition, but rather we will be mimicking vlookup to pull the last item.
Consider the following data:
| George | Smith |
| Tom | Thompson |
| George | Kenny |
| Dan | Jackson |
| Sally | Richards |
| George | Daniels |
A vlookup of the name George will return Smith, What if you want to lookup the last George listed? The solution is to use the lookup function:
=LOOKUP(2,1/(A1:A6=A7),B1:B6)
Where:
A1:A6 = the lookup range
B1:B6 = the data to return
A7 = The condition (The item to lookup)
For more advanced lookups like returning the 2nd occurrence of George, you can try the VlookupPlus Excel Add in.
Joseph Harris
Excel Help
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