Steve,

I was aware of the Excel Help that you cited before I posted previously.

You wrote: Range_lookup doesn't mean *use sorted table*, but whether you
want an
exact match.

Theoretically, that may be true. However, based on my experience with the
grade/score table, it didn't just require the table to be sorted but in the
right order i.e. ascending.

You wrote: The *nearest but not bigger* match (the default method) just
requires them
to be in ascending order.

Hmmm ...... just requires ...... I was looking for some reasoning when I
posted ......

Thanks for trying anyway.

Epinn


"SteveW" wrote in message
news:op.td4l0ibievjsnp@enigma03...
"Range_lookup is a logical value that specifies whether you want VLOOKUP
to find an exact match or an approximate match. If TRUE or omitted, an
approximate match is returned. In other words, if an exact match is not
found, the next largest value that is less than lookup_value is returned.
If FALSE, VLOOKUP will find an exact match. If one is not found, the error
value #N/A is returned"

The above is from Excel Help

Range_lookup doesn't mean *use sorted table*, but whether you want an
exact match.

You can have your table in descending order, but in that case it will have
to have *false* as the last parameter and will *only* return exact match.

The *nearest but not bigger* match (the default method) just requires them
to be in ascending order.
Thats the function they provide, use it either way.

Steve

On Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:20:34 +0100, Epinn
wrote:

Is it true that under all circumstances I must sort the array table in
**ascending** order so that VLOOKUP will return the proper values? Is
it
only necessary when I deal with ranges, say minimum score and a grade?
Appreciate explanation.



I have a column of scores and a corresponding column of grades. e.g. 90
A
80 B 70 C 60 D

I am surprised that if the table is in **descending** order and ¡§true¡¨
is
used as an argument, it doesn¡¦t work even if I key in the **exact**
score
say 90, not 95, not 93. "D" is returned for 90. Wonder why.



Thank you in advance.



Epinn






--
Steve (3)