I am trying to create an academic progress form for college students that is
specific to our department's requirements. We have different categories of
classes that need to be completed: chemistry, biology, calculus, etc. Some of
these are specific, e.g. Biology 171; for others, students have options, e.g.
either Chemistry 151 or 161. We get a report on the courses students have
completed each semester, which I put into a separate worksheet. I want the
Excel form to automatically fill in course information in the appropriate
category spaces based on course report data. I am attempting to use VLOOKUP
to bring in specific data for the courses in these categories, but I'm stuck
on this question.
Q. How can I get Excel to look for more than one course that could fulfill
a requirement, e.g. the chemistry requirement?

I understand that if I sort my table by dept. name and then course number ,
then I can use VLOOKUP to get what I want. The table array reference would be
specific to a single dept so that only its sorted course numbers would be
included. I can then return at least the highest number course the student
has taken by using a lookup value that is larger than any course number in
the table. However, since this table will grow as courses are added over
time, the table array reference will need to change each time data is added.

Is this a more appropriate task for Access? I'm not familiar with how it
works.

Thanks,