Nowadays, we can see that MS Excel is a very popular Office tool which is being used for various customized reports by using tricky formulas and in-built functions etc.
In this resource, I’m going to explain how to avoid VLOOKUP or INDEX & MATCH functions to save time & headache. Alternatively, we can say it is a substitute of VLOOKUP or INDEX & MATCH formula (technically, it is not a formula. Just a trick where we are going to use a pivot table to get things done).
So, let’s start with the topic.
Suppose, we have data of 1000+ rows and columns.
Now, we have been appointed the task to take some required fields from the database like employee designation and salary by using their employee id etc.
![](https://www.csharp.com/UploadFile/ResourceImages/10232018002636AM/Capture.PNG)
In such scenario, we just think to use unique values like employee ID, assuming that VLOOKUP or INDEX & MATCH is the perfect solution (No doubt, it's perfect); but if we have again received the command from boss to take family details of the employees, then what? Then, we have to write/repeat the formulae (VLOOKUP/INDEX & MATCH)? NO!
In such a scenario, a pivot table is the best option where we can save time, as well as the headache.
Here is the external link to understand pivot tables.
Thank you!