I'm so new to excel that even though I know how to create some functions, I
do not know the terminology, so I don't even know what to ask to get my
answer. Bear with me.

Imagine a table: Down the leftmost column is "Apples" "Pears" "Oranges", and
across the topmost row is "Retail Price" "Quantity" "Our Cost". The rest of
the table is filled with the appropriate numbers, so when i look at it I can
easily see what "our cost" for "pears" is, or what the "quantity" of
"oranges" are.

But say I want it to be that easy for a spreadsheet user: Somewhere on the
same worksheet I have two cells, one cell to enter the name of the fruit, the
other cell to enter the property of the fruit (property may not be the right
word). But the user enters "pears" in one cell and "our cost" in the other
cell. The gears turn and out pops the appropriate response (say "$1.25") in
another cell. How do I do that?

Another table would be one that most of us remember seeing on maps: the
distance between two cities. Along the left is listed a number of cities,
and along the top is that same list of cities. To find the distance between
"New York" and "Las Vegas" you simply had to finger across one city's row and
down the other city's column until your fingers met and that was your answer.
So how do I simply do this in excel if the user types in "New York" in one
cell and "Las Vegas" in the other?

Thanks.