Essentially, I need to do a reverse-lookup; rather than finding the first
instance in a range, I need to find the last.

My ColA contains a list of twenty repeating names, and ColB contains a
number corresponding to each instance of a name. I'm trying to look up the
value in ColB corresponding to the last instance of a given name. For
instance, if my columns are such:

ColA | ColB
Bob | 1
Steve | 12
Mary | 41
Bob | 68
Mary | 3
Mary | 15
Steve | 72
Bob | 9

.... and I provide "Bob", I'd like to return the value 9; if I provide
"Mary", I'd like to return the value 15.

Thanks!

Cell C1 will hold the name I'm providing.

Try this:

=LOOKUP(2,1/(A2:A9="Bob"),B2:B9)


--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"PaladinWhite" wrote in message
...
Essentially, I need to do a reverse-lookup; rather than finding the first
instance in a range, I need to find the last.

My ColA contains a list of twenty repeating names, and ColB contains a
number corresponding to each instance of a name. I'm trying to look up the
value in ColB corresponding to the last instance of a given name. For
instance, if my columns are such:

ColA | ColB
Bob | 1
Steve | 12
Mary | 41
Bob | 68
Mary | 3
Mary | 15
Steve | 72
Bob | 9

... and I provide "Bob", I'd like to return the value 9; if I provide
"Mary", I'd like to return the value 15.

Thanks!

Cell C1 will hold the name I'm providing.