Thank you for your assistance Vezerid. That solution does not help with this
particular problem but will certainly come in useful with a different dilema!

My data is not set in structure. The number of rows containing data
underneath each customer is direclty linked to how many products they buy.
Some customer who only order 1 product will have a 5 row inclusion, whereas a
customer ordering 6 products will have over 30 rows. The data is updated
weekly and the structure can change by any customer ordering or not ordering
a particular product. I need a formula that is dynamic and can 'search' for
the product name following a given customer name.
--
Matthew Cardiff


"vezerid" wrote:

I have not fully understood the structure of your data but you will
most certainly need OFFSET. The expression:

=INDEX(A:A,MATCH(custA,A:A,0))

will locate the cell that contains custA in column A:A. From there you
can use OFFSET. For example, a customer's total is 4 rows further down
and 4 columns further to the right. Thus, to retrieve the total of
custA:

=OFFSET(INDEX(A:A,MATCH(custA,A:A,0)),4,4)

Does this help?
Kostis Vezerides

On Oct 17, 4:41 pm, Matthew Cardiff
wrote:
Hello there - I hope you can help. I am fast losing my hair on this one!

I have a data sheet in Excel 2000 that I cannot alter or sort. As per my
example below it contains numerous rows that contain a list of customers.
Under each customer it contains product by product data that is then sorted
by column into monthly sales and then totals. My problem is that I need a
LOOKUP formula that is able to say "Lookup row with Customer A, THEN LOOKUP
the next row that contains 'product B', THEN find the column in that row that
gives TOTAL".

Ambitous maybe. I have bought 3 Excel books that do not give the solution so
I hope it is something that comes with experience not books! Each customer
has the same list of products so I am struggling to locate a multiple formula
that finds the NEXT "product A" after a particular customer.

Example data

AXIS / col a / col b / colc / col d / col z

row 1 / customer a / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 2 / product a / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 3 / blank / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 4 / blank / blank / jan / feb / col z
row 5 / blank / sales / 100 / 200 / TOTAL

row 23 / customer g / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 24 / product a / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 25 / blank / blank / blank / blank / col z
row 26 / blank / blank / jan / feb / col z
row 27 / blank / sales / 200 / 300 / TOTAL

Summary: Is there a formula I can use that ignores the empty cells and can
locate on a data sheet a particular customer name in column A, then the next
particular product also in column A, then a particular attribute (sales or
revenue) which is in column B, then return from that row the value in column
Z (TOTAL).

Thank you in advance for your help on this problem. I have seen how much
advice has been given on the other topics and think this community is
fantastic.
--
Matthew Cardiff