Excel Find Column Containing a Value

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Last week I had an email from Mike asking how he can lookup a suburb in a range of columns and return the post code from the header row.

I imagine his data was a bit like this:

And in cell B9 he wants to find the post code for Herston.

One way is with this array formula:

=INDEX(B1:F1,,MIN(IF(B2:F5=A9,COLUMN(A:E))))

Entered with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

Download the Excel Workbook and follow along. Note: this is a .xlsx workbook, please ensure your browser doesn't change the file extension on download.

Before we dive in, here are the syntaxes for the INDEX and IF functions as a reminder (I’ve crossed out the arguments we’re not using):

INDEX(reference,row_num,[column_num],[area_num])

IF(logical_test, [value_if_true],[value_if_false])

The INDEX formula is returning a reference to the cell in the first row for the column containing ‘Herston’. For the column_num argument it uses a combination of IF, COLUMN and MIN.

Here it is again for reference:

=INDEX(B1:F1,,MIN(IF(B2:F5=A9,COLUMN(A:E))))

In English the above formula reads:

Check the cells in the range B2:F5 for 'Herston' and tell INDEX what column number it's in. i.e. column 4. INDEX (look in) the range B1:F1 and return a reference to the 4th cell i.e. E1, which contains 4006.

So what’s MIN got to do with it….hold your horses, more on that in a moment.

Let’s step through the formula in the order it evaluates:

Step 1 - IF function’s logical_test: B2:F5=A9 i.e. B2:F5=Herston and it looks like this:

=INDEX(B1:F1,,MIN(IF({FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;  FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE; FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE;  FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE},,COLUMN(A:E))))

Tip: did you notice in the formula above there is a semicolon after every 5^th ‘FALSE’ instead of a comma. This semicolon represents a new row in the array.

Or if you imagine our formula is putting together a list of values representing each row in the table like this:

Step 2 - COLUMN function: This evaluates to return a horizontal array of numbers {1,2,3,4,5} for our IF function’s value_if_true argument. These numbers represent the 5 columns B:F in our table.

Our formula now looks like this:

=INDEX(B1:F1,,MIN(IF({FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE},{1,2,3,4,5})))

Tip: Instead of using the COLUMN function to generate the array of numbers we could simply type {1,2,3,4,5} into the formula. However, with large horizontal arrays it’s quicker (and dynamic) if we use the COLUMN function to generate the array, or for vertical arrays you can use the ROW function.

Note: if you don’t want your COLUMN function to be dynamic you can use the INDIRECT function to fix it, like this:

=INDEX(B1:F1,,MIN(IF(B2:F5=A9,COLUMN(INDIRECT("A:E")))))

Step 3 - IF function value_if_true: The IF function finishes evaluating by assigning the value_if_true numbers (generated by the COLUMN function) to the TRUE results in the logical_test.

To visualise this we can look at the 3^rd horizontal array (i.e. the series of FALSE/TRUE after the second semicolon below). Remember this is the 3^rd row of our table above.

Excel gives the TRUE results the corresponding number from the array generated from the COLUMN function {1,2,3,4,5} like so:

Note: In this step the FALSE values evaluate to nothing i.e. they are ignored. Remember we don’t have a value_if_false argument in our IF formula. Our formula now looks like this:

Step 4 – MIN: This simply evaluates to find the one and only number; 4.

=INDEX(B1:F1,, 4)

Tip: Since there is only one number remaining (the rest are all FALSE) we could have used MAX or SUM to get the same result as MIN.

Step 5 – INDEX: Finally INDEX can return a reference to the 4^th column in the range B1:F1 which is cell E1 containing post code 4006.

Tip: Notice how our INDEX formula doesn’t have a row_num argument:

Since our reference is only one row high we don’t have to type a 1 in for the row_num argument, we simply enter a comma as a placeholder and continue on to the column_num argument.

What The?

Did you find that tricky?

When working with long or complex formulas I like to use the Evaluate Formula tool to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

You can also evaluate parts of your formula by highlighting the section of the function in the formula bar and pressing the F9 key. Below I’ve evaluated the COLUMN(A:E) part of my formula:

To revert to the original formula either press the escape key or CTRL+Z.

Thanks

Thanks to Mike for inspiring this post.

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