When you dive into the world of Excel, you quickly realize the power of its functions. Among these, the INDEX & MATCH formulas stand out as incredibly versatile tools for data lookup and retrieval ...

How Excel's INDEX and XMATCH Functions Work Before we look at how these two functions can be used together in one formula, let's take a moment to explore how they work in isolation.

Excel MATCH is a Lookup and Reference function to search for specific items in a range of cell & return the relative position of that item in the range.

SEE: How to become a developer: A cheat sheet (TechRepublic) Set the match_mode to 2 and you can use the usual Excel ? and * wildcards to specify what to match on.

Microsoft Excel’s XLOOKUP() is powerful, but combined with wildcards, it’s also flexible.

Using the INDEX and MATCH functions may do what you need not only faster but also using less memory as well.