How to Look Up a Value by Row and Column with INDEX in Excel

Read any cell of a grid by row and column — with numbers, with two MATCHes, or a whole column at once.

You will learn to

• Return the value at a given row and column of a grid
• Drive both coordinates with MATCH
• Return a whole column with INDEX and total it

How it works

INDEX(array, row_num, column_num) returns the value where a row and a column cross. =INDEX(B2:F8,3,5) reads the 3rd row and 5th column of the grid. Replace the numbers with MATCH to look up by labels: =INDEX(B2:F8,MATCH("Dalia",A2:A8,0),MATCH("Wed",B1:F1,0)).

A row or column number of 0 returns the entire column or row, so =SUM(INDEX(B2:F8,0,MATCH("Wed",B1:F1,0))) totals Wednesday without naming the column. This two-way pattern works in every version of Excel.

=INDEX(B2:F8,MATCH(I4,A2:A8,0),MATCH(I5,B1:F1,0))