in various cells (like R18C2 (cell A), R37C2 (cell B), R18C4 (cell C), ...) I
have a MIN() value extracted from elsewhere. Then, in a cell like R40C3 (cell
D)I get the smallest of these (via MIN() again). So in cell D I have the
'smallest of cells' A, B and C. Then next to cell D I want the contents of a
cell which is next to the one form where the result in cell D is...my gosh
this is ocnfusing, here is an example:
MIN(cell A, cell B, cell C) results in cell B and that goes into cell D;
then next to cell D I want a cell C.C[-1] - the cell in the column preceding
cell C. I was looking into INDEX and VLOOKUP but I am not sure how they work
with arbitrary columns...can you help?

Solution to this would be via OFFSET, but how do I get the complete reference
(Rxx:Cxx) of a cell returned by MIN()?

"Mac" wrote:

in various cells (like R18C2 (cell A), R37C2 (cell B), R18C4 (cell C), ...) I
have a MIN() value extracted from elsewhere. Then, in a cell like R40C3 (cell
D)I get the smallest of these (via MIN() again). So in cell D I have the
'smallest of cells' A, B and C. Then next to cell D I want the contents of a
cell which is next to the one form where the result in cell D is...my gosh
this is ocnfusing, here is an example:
MIN(cell A, cell B, cell C) results in cell B and that goes into cell D;
then next to cell D I want a cell C.C[-1] - the cell in the column preceding
cell C. I was looking into INDEX and VLOOKUP but I am not sure how they work
with arbitrary columns...can you help?