XLOOKUP, UNIQUE and FILTER

Real quick post tonight because it is late. The stuff I was trying to do today took all day long – I had hopes on getting this particular task done further along but instead it is taking a long time to run.

Anyway, I wanted to do a quickie post on those new functions that Microsoft has been putting out. These are functions that are available on Microsoft 365 or the subscription Excel, not on products such as Microsoft 2016 or 2019. If you have Microsoft 2016 or 2019, or even older, on your machine, you most likely have a Microsoft account where you can access the free online versions. I’m not sure how robust these free online versions are but you can test out the new functions.

Specifically, XLOOKUP replaces VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP, and the INDEX/MATCH combo. The new function is much easier to use and makes much more sense. I was talking to someone who was going to learn about the VLOOKUP but I told her to learn XLOOKUP instead (because she is on the subscription model). Later, she told me that she looked up both VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP and found that XLOOKUP made so much more sense that she is going to ignore VLOOKUP.

The other functions that I think would be fun to play with is UNIQUE and FILTER. UNIQUE could replace the data filtering method that I currently use to retrieve a list of unique items in a long column of items/data/categories/etc. (to be distinguished from removing duplicates). FILTER could come in handy; I just haven’t found a use for it but intuitively, I feel like it could play a big role.

Anyway, that is it for tonight. Short and sweet.