You are probably lacking information here, but try this:
=LOOKUP(B1,{"Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","J ul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"})

Or perhaps this:
=OFFSET($A$1,,MATCH(B1,{"Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","M ay","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec"},0 ))

Regards,
Ryan--

--
RyGuy


"PCLIVE" wrote:

Gives an example of your current formula attempt.

--

"GJP" wrote in message
...
I've got a spreadsheet that tracks a number of inventory categories &
values
by month. The last column calculates the Monthly Change for each row -
this
month's inventory minus last month's inventory. Rather than change the
formula each month I thought I could use a nested IF based on the month
number, but ran into the limitation of 7 nested IFs, which is a problem
given
that there are 12 months. Anyone have a good way to do a subtraction
calculation in a cell that will have varying column references each month?
Thanks