Python for Excel Users, Part 3: Merging Datasets and Replacing Your VLOOKUPs
VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP, but for files that don't fit in memory, joins on multiple keys, and many-to-many matches that VLOOKUP simply can't do.
Posts about XLOOKUP.
VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP, but for files that don't fit in memory, joins on multiple keys, and many-to-many matches that VLOOKUP simply can't do.
XLOOKUP, LET, LAMBDA, BYROW, SCAN, MAP — Microsoft shipped more genuinely useful functions in the last three years than in the previous decade. If you learned Excel before 2022 and haven't revisite…
The counter-argument to 'if your formula needs a scrollbar to read, it's wrong.' With LAMBDA, complexity lives in one named place and gets called cleanly everywhere else. The formula in your cell c…
Before LAMBDA, every Excel function that existed was one Microsoft decided to write. After LAMBDA, you can write them yourself — naming the logic, hiding the complexity, and calling your custom fun…
Complex formulas aren't the problem. Unreadable ones are. Before LET, you had to repeat the same range reference six times or accept that your formula was a black box. LET gives you named variables in
One tweak to your most-used formula and it suddenly reads like plain English. LET() lets you name the messy middle parts — so next month's you won't need to reverse-engineer what current you was …
It works, so why change it? Because every workaround you've added to compensate for VLOOKUP's limits is technical debt in your spreadsheet - and it compounds. The cost isn't visible until somethi…
Stop replacing VLOOKUPs. Your workbook deserves XLOOKUP without touching the formula.
I spent years writing 400-character Ctrl+Shift+Enter arrays just to filter a table, but the calculation engine finally changed the rules and killed that misery for good.