you have 4/5 in twice
assume the entire table is A1: E5

A10 has =A3
A10 shows 2-May

B10 has
=INDEX(A1:E1,,MATCH(1,OFFSET( A1:D1,MATCH(A10,A2:A5),0)))

B10 shows 'Chips'

"SmilingPolitely" wrote in message
...
I have a spreadsheet that might be something like:

Apple Banana Chips Drink
01/05 0 0 0 1
02/05 0 1 0 0
04/05 1 0 0 0
04/05 0 0 1 0


What I need to do is read the value in the top row, given a particular
date (from the first column) to return the value from the top row where
the intersection of the row and column is 1

I cannot get my head around the lookup functions, lookup, hlookup, vlookup
etc to allow me to return the axis value given the intersection value!

I hope someone can help, or at least point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.