The VLOOKUP function always looks up a value in the leftmost column of a table and returns the corresponding value from a column to the right. 1. For example, the VLOOKUP function below looks up the first name and returns the last name. No worries, you can use INDEX and MATCH in Excel to perform a left lookup.

What is a VLOOKUP in Excel?

VLOOKUP stands for Vertical Lookup. It is a function that makes Excel search for a certain value in a column (the so called table array), in order to return a value from a different column in the same row.