VLOOKUP is an Excel function to look up data in a table organized vertically. VLOOKUP takes four arguments: lookup_value, table_array, column_index_num, and range_lookup. Lookup_value is the value to look for.

Table_array is the range of vertical data to look inside. The first column of table_array must contain the lookup values to search.

The column_index_num argument is the column number of the value to retrieve, where the first column of table_array is column 1.

Finally, range_lookup controls match behavior. If range_lookup is TRUE, VLOOKUP will perform an approximate match. If range_lookup is FALSE, VLOOKUP will perform an exact match.

Important: range_lookup is optional and defaults to TRUE, so VLOOKUP will perform an approximate match by default. The value that we are looking for should always be in the left-most column.

The Excel HLOOKUP function finds and retrieves a value from data in a horizontal table. The “H” in HLOOKUP stands for “horizontal”, and lookup values must appear in the first row of the table, moving horizontally to the right. HLOOKUP supports approximate and exact matching.

HLOOKUP takes four arguments. The first argument, called lookup_value, is the value to look up.

The second argument, table_array, is a range that contains the lookup table.

The third argument, row_index_num is the row number in the table from which to retrieve a value.The fourth and final argument, range_lookup, controls matching. Use TRUE or 1 for an approximate match and FALSE or 0 for an exact match.