Hi

Lookup, Vlookup and Hlookup all work faster if the data is sorted.

Vlookup and Hlookup can work quite happily with unsorted data and large
amounts of data, provided that you set the 4th parameter to False or 0

=VLOOKUP(A1,$C:$E$,3,0)
would look the value found in cell A1 in the whole of column C (all
65,536 rows - in XL2003 or lower) and return the corresponding value
from column E even though the data is unsorted.

If you omit the 4th parameter then it is assumed to default to True or 1
and it would return value in column E, where the value in column C was
not greater than the value from cell A1


--
Regards

Roger Govier


"Knox" wrote in message
...
I have found that the lookup function does not work if it is sifting
through
lots of records. Also it seems to work better if the data is sorted.
Is
there any limit on the number of records for the lookup function?
Does
sorting the data help? What exactly are the limits to the lookup
function?
thank you!