"Alan Perkins" wrote in message
...
I have two suggestions to improve VLookup:

1. Add an optional parameter that provides a result if the Vlookup returns
NA so that you don;t need to wrap it in an If (ISNA...


they have done that in Excel 2007 with the IFERROR function

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B1,K1:M10,2,FALSE),"")


2. Make the column offset capable of negative values so that you can
offset
to the left of the reference column.


Problem with that is you are the asking it to get a value from a column that
is not in lookup table, a problem It is easily simulated with

=INDEX(A;A,MATCH(lookup_value,B:C,0))