Question

In Excel, for an "exact match" VLOOKUP function to work correctly, the values in the first column of the lookup table must be sorted in which order?

A) Ascending order
B) Descending order
C) Random order
D) Alphabetical orde

Answer 1

In Excel, for an "exact match" VLOOKUP function the first column of the lookup table can be in a random order because the function searches for the exact value regardless of the order.

Step-by-step explanation:

When using the VLOOKUP function in Excel with an "exact match", the requirement for the first column of the lookup table is that it does not need to be sorted in any particular order. This means that the correct answer is C) Random order. Exact match VLOOKUP searches for the exact value in the first column and returns the corresponding value in the same row from the specified column.

For an approximate match VLOOKUP, which is not the case in your question, the first column of the table array must be in ascending order. However, when you are looking for an exact match (by setting the 'range_lookup' argument to FALSE), the order of the values does not affect the function's ability to return the correct data.