Google Sheets Advanced Lookup Functions Flashcards
7 cards from real Google Sheets Test practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Google Sheets Advanced Lookup Functions flashcards as text
You need to look up a value and return the result from a column to the LEFT of it. Which approach works?
Answer: INDEX/MATCH or XLOOKUP
VLOOKUP cannot look left, but INDEX/MATCH and XLOOKUP can return values from any direction.
What is the result of an XLOOKUP when the lookup value is missing and no if_not_found argument is given?
Answer: #N/A
Without an if_not_found value, XLOOKUP returns #N/A when no match exists.
Why might a VLOOKUP return #N/A even though the value visibly appears in the table?
Answer: Hidden extra spaces or a number stored as text mismatch
Trailing spaces or type mismatches (text vs. number) cause exact matches to fail silently.
Which function combination lets you look up a value based on two criteria at once?
Answer: INDEX with MATCH using concatenated keys
Concatenating criteria inside MATCH (or using multiplication in an array) enables multi-criteria lookups.
In =INDEX(C2:C10, MATCH(E2, A2:A10, 0)), what does the 0 in MATCH mean?
Answer: Exact match
A match_type of 0 tells MATCH to find an exact match, the safest option for unsorted data.
What advantage does XLOOKUP have over VLOOKUP when columns are inserted or moved?
Answer: It references arrays directly, so it doesn't break
XLOOKUP points to actual lookup and return arrays rather than a fixed column index, so structural changes don't break it.
How do you wrap a lookup so an error displays a friendly message instead of #N/A?
Answer: IFERROR(lookup, "Not found")
IFERROR catches the #N/A (or any error) and substitutes your specified text.
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