How to Trick Vlookup to look in any direction

Hello,

So this is my first Excel Article and I find it super informative for someone beginners like me who have to go through all the post of legends like @Aladin Akyurek @Eric W and many more to learn something new. So I thought i should write something looking at the recent post of Eric W

So Lets get Started,

In vlookup we have always known that the criteria or the Lookup value should always be on the left hand side of the Table array to return the value say



But here is the trick, We can trick vlookup using functions like "if" and "choose'' to return values without keeping the criteria on the leftmost side of table. Which means the criteria column can be in any order to return the value as it is done in "lookup" formula

Consider this

So i have lookup value or the criteria in the rightmost side of the table array. What we did was we would create a helper column in the leftmost side and copy the lookup criteria and did the lookup.

Now we can skip this old-fashioned method with using if and choose function. So here's the example




The trick using if function i have learnt from @shaowu459 . It was amazing

Hope it might help someone like me who are beginners like me.