I'm a nerdy engineer, and therefore it should come as no surprise to everyone that I really like Excel. I suspect many of you are nerdy Excel-lovers as well. If you are an Excel-junky you've probably come to appreciate the VLookup function, which allows you to find a value in a data set, and then return an adjacent value in a nearby column. It's an awesome tool, but unfortunately it has some limitations. If you want to really level-up your VLookup game, you need to start using Index-Match instead.
What do I mean by Index-Match? In a nutshell, these are two individual functions in Excel, "Index" and "Match". Index gives you the value in an array based on it's coordinates, and Match tells you where in an array a specified value is located. When you combine these two into a single formula, you can achieve the same thing as VLookup, but without the limitations. In other words, you get a more powerful version of VLookup.
If you've never tried the Index-Match technique before, it can seem confusing at first, so I'll give you a quick guide. Your formula should look something like this:
=Index(location of value you want to return [array], Match(value you want to lookup [cell], where the lookup value is located [array], 0))
Use this formula to create really powerful lookup functions that blow VLookup out of the water.