If you’ve been a user of Excel for any decent length of time, you’ve probably used the VLOOKUP tool. It was included in the very first version of Excel over 30 years ago and is likely the first lookup function you probably used in Excel. However, it does have some limitations. Some of those limitations were addressed by the HLOOKUP function, but that had some limitations as well. Microsoft has created a new lookup function, XLOOKUP, that adds some new features and is built to be used instead of VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. You can read more about it in their announcement here and see it in action below:
Available to Office 365 users soon, this lookup function addresses the limitations and is built to be used going forward as a replacement for both. Neither VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP are going away, but it is recommended that you start getting used to XLOOKUP.
I’m not an Excel wizard, so I’m going to defer to another site: How-To-Geek has a great tutorial on transitioning from VLOOKUP to XLOOKUP and how to use the function in your spreadsheets.
Have a favorite feature or function in Excel? Comment below!