I never use LOOKUP, but the documentation seems to say that the list it's
searching must be in ascending order, so if that's not an option for you, you
must switch to MATCH or VLOOKUP (or HLOOKUP, of course, depending on the
direction of the vector). But why are you doing a lookup of any sort? Your
description of the task sounds more like what you want is to sort a list of
data by times and pick the top ten.

I know you said "Putting the values in ascending order is not an option",
but I'll bet it is. After all, you have the list of times, so you can
probably sort the list on that column. For example, do you mean only that
LEAVING them in ascending order is not an option? Perhaps you're just not
allowed to change the .xls file - but you can sort the list, pick out the top
ten times and names, and then just not save the file. Or maybe the .xls is
read-only to you - but you can copy the list to your own and unprotected
workbook and sort it there.

Whatever your answer to this, it isn't clear to me how a lookup function
will solve your problem anyway. A lookup expects you to have a particular
value you're looking for, say 3.53 seconds, which as I understand it is not
what you have available.

--- "thscc1659" wrote:
I'm trying to use the LOOKUP function to search a LOOKUP VECTOR that is not
in ascending order. Putting the values in ascending order is not an option.
Is there any way to use LOOKUP with these values?

Row B has Names and Row C has their corresponding race times in
chronological order. I'm trying generate a Top 10 times list (with the
corresponding names) from the data.