HLOOKUP function in Google Sheets - Real Business Scenario

Scenario Mode

👤 Your Role: You are a sales analyst at a retail company.

📋 Request: Your manager wants a quick way to find monthly sales figures for specific products using a horizontal lookup.

📊 Data: You have a table where the first row lists product names and the second row lists sales numbers for January.

🎯 Deliverable: Create a formula using HLOOKUP to find the sales number for a given product.

Sample Data

	Product A	Product B	Product C	Product D
January	120	150	100	130

1

Step 1: Select a cell where you want to display the sales for a product, for example, cell B4.

Expected Result

2

Step 2: Enter the product name you want to look up in cell B3, for example, type 'Product B'.

Expected Result

Cell B3 contains 'Product B'

3

Step 3: In cell B4, enter the HLOOKUP formula to find the sales for the product typed in B3.

=HLOOKUP(B3, A1:E2, 2, FALSE)

Expected Result

150

4

Step 4: Change the product name in B3 to 'Product D' and observe the sales number update automatically.

Expected Result

Cell B4 shows 130

Final Result

    Product A  Product B  Product C  Product D
January    120        150        100        130

Lookup Product: Product B
Sales Number: 150

✓HLOOKUP can quickly find sales numbers by product name in a horizontal table.

✓Changing the lookup value updates the result automatically.

✓Using FALSE as the last argument ensures an exact match.

Bonus Challenge

Modify the formula to handle cases where the product name is not found, showing 'Not Found' instead of an error.

Show Hint

Use the IFERROR function around your HLOOKUP formula, like IFERROR(HLOOKUP(...), "Not Found")