Excel vlookup conditional table array

[Jabso]

So I've got a spreadsheet with a massive amount of data by month.

July DOG 1
Aug DOG 2
July CAT 3
Aug CAT 4


I want to run a vlookup against the DOG/CAT column and return the value for the specific month. A regular vlookup will simply return the first one. For example if I want to find DOG's number in August a regular vlookup will give me 1 not the correct answer 2.

Is there a way I can get the vlookup to only look in the rows that say "Aug" in column 1?

Sorting is not really an option with this amount of data.

 

[The Passenger]

I think the way your supposed to do this is to combine it with an IFS statement which is the range and criteria?

But i'm lazy so i'll just do a dodgy one and have a hidden field which combines the fields use CONCATENATE i want do VLOOKUPS. so your table would like

July | Dog | JulyDog | 1
Aug | Dog | AugDog | 2
July | Cat | JulyCat | 3
Aug | Cat | AugCat | 4

And you do the VLOOKUPS on the third column and keep that column hidden so it doesn't look ugly

 

[Jabso]

I think the way your supposed to do this is to combine it with an IFS statement which is the range and criteria?

But i'm lazy so i'll just do a dodgy one and have a hidden field which combines the fields use CONCATENATE i want do VLOOKUPS. so your table would like

July | Dog | JulyDog | 1
Aug | Dog | AugDog | 2
July | Cat | JulyCat | 3
Aug | Cat | AugCat | 4

And you do the VLOOKUPS on the third column and keep that column hidden so it doesn't look ugly

Looks like a good plan. I was trying to get too fancy thinking whether I can do a long ass nested if statement in the table field.

 

[The Passenger]

Looks like a good plan. I was trying to get too fancy thinking whether I can do a long arse nested if statement in the table field.

should have mentioned cause it's easy to forgot, but what you have to make sure is the records in the concatenated field are all unique otherwise it can stuff you around. in the latest versions of excel there is a highlight duplicate values conditional formatting option to check that.

i would take out the conditional formatting once you've confirmed no duplicates. i might be wrong but i think it uses quite a bit of memory?