How do I Lookup Value and Find Max Date in Excel?

Excel is a valuable tool for many businesses. It can be used to track inventory, customers, sales, and more. However, many people don’t realize the full potential of Excel. One of the most powerful features of Excel is its ability to lookup values and find the max date. This can be a valuable tool for tracking sales, customers, or inventory.

In order to lookup values and find the max date, you will need to use the VLOOKUP function. The VLOOKUP function allows you to lookup a value in a table and return the corresponding value from another column. For example, if you have a table of customer data, you can use the VLOOKUP function to lookup a customer’s name and return their address.

In order to use the VLOOKUP function, you will need to know the following:

The lookup value – this is the value that you want to lookup in the table.

The table array – this is the range of cells that contains the table of data.

The col index num – this is the column number in the table array that contains the value that you want to return.

The range lookup – this is a optional argument that specifies whether you want an exact match or a approximate match.

Once you have this information, you can use the VLOOKUP function in the following way:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value, table array, col index num, [range lookup])

For example, if you wanted to lookup the customer “John Smith” in the table array A1:B10 and return the customer’s address, you would use the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(“John Smith”, A1:B10, 2, FALSE)

This would return the value “123 Main Street” from column B.

You can also use the VLOOKUP function to find the max date. To do this, you will need to use the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(MAX(lookup value), table array, col index num, [range lookup])

For example, if you wanted to find the max date in the table array A1:B10, you would use the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(MAX(A1:A10), A1:B10, 2, FALSE)

This would return the value “4/15/2015” from column B.

The VLOOKUP function is a powerful tool that can be used to lookup values and find the max date. This can be a valuable tool for tracking sales, customers, or inventory.


You can use the following formula in Excel to lookup a specific value and then return the max date (i.e. most recent date) associated with the value: 

=MAX(IF(A2:A13=F1, C2:C13))

This particular formula finds the max date in the range C2:C13 where the value in the range A2:A13 is equal to the value in cell F1.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: Lookup Value and Find Max Date in Excel

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that contains information about when basketball players joined specific teams:

Suppose we would like to look up the value “Mavs” in the Team column and then return the max date associated with this team.

We can specify the Mavericks team name in cell F1 and then type the following formula into cell F2 to find the max date:

=MAX(IF(A2:A13=F1, C2:C13))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

By default, Excel displays the date in a numeric format.

To convert this to a recognizable date format, select cell F2 and then click the Number Format dropdown menu on the Home tab and then click Short Date:

The date will now be formatted as 4/13/2009, which represents the earliest date in the Join Date column where the value in the corresponding cell of the Team column is equal to Mavs:

Excel lookup value and find max date

For example, suppose we change the team name to Rockets:

The formula now returns 6/5/2017, which is the max date (i.e. most recent date) associated with the Rockets.

x