But it's only 3 as long as the datalist starts in Column A.
If it starts in Column B, the C becomes 2!

How would you want to resolve that?

If you're always starting in Column A, and you enjoy typing, use the column
label itself instead of the column index number, like:

=VLOOKUP(E1,A1:D17,COLUMN(C:C),0)
OR
=VLOOKUP(E1,A1:D17,COLUMN(C1),0)

Which return the exact same results as:

=VLOOKUP(E1,A1:D17,3,0)

--

HTH,

RD
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Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
================================================== ===

"shelly2" wrote in
message ...

I use the Vlookup a lot and sometimes in some very large spreadsheets.
As you can imagine I spend a lot of time counting columns to find the
column index number. Is there a formula I can use that will do that
counting for me? For example if my lookup value is in column A and my
return value is in column C the answer for this formula should be 3.

Thank you,
Shelly


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