Excel - Custom Lookup - excel

Question

I am having a really tough time finding a way to pull data from one sheet to another for a specific task.
On sheet1 I have 42005 (jan 1, 2015) in A1 and it goes to 42735 (Dec 31, 2016)
------A1------|42005|42006|42007|42008|...
Employee 1|-Yes--|-Yes--|-Yes--|-Yes-|...
Employee 1|-Yes--|-Yes--|-Yes--|-Yes-|...
I Need a "Yes", "No", or "Different Unique ID" to show up in the above list in the second row for conditional formatting from the data below. If the date in the header is listed in the bottom table, then i need a unique ID.
On sheet2 I have date ranges that employees work (45 days at work and 7 days off, for example)
Employee 1 | Employee 1 0.01| Employee 2 | Employee 2 0.01
Start--------- | End-----------------|Start-----------|End
42005------- | 42049---------------|42005---------|42049
45------------ | 10--------------------|45--------------|10
42060------- | 42104---------------|42060---------|42104
45 ----------- | 10--------------------|45--------------|10
42115------- | 42159---------------|42115---------|42159
45 ----------- | 10--------------------|45--------------|10
I need a way to match the current date to the start and end dates that are listed, they need unique ID as the result of an IF function for conditional formatting. This notes that it is either the beginning date or the end date which is considered a "travel day".
Basically, I need B2 in the top example to say IF an exact match of the above date in A2 can be found in column1 or column2 of employee 1's [section] in the table, then "unique ID". What I cant figure out is how to search in BOTH employee 1 and employee 1 0.01 columns depending on the name field in the top.
The name column in the top example is a list drop down, so i have to find a dynamic formula for this. Manually assigning a range to each cells lookup fields wouldn't work.
=HLOOKUP(B$2,Sheet2!$A$1:$GR$340,MATCH($A2,Sheet2!$A$1:$GR$1),FALSE)>=100,18, "false")
Clearly that doesn't work, but was an idea to try to get the search in the right area. No way i can find the correct column for the name, then select that column +340 rows, and +1 column to the right for the proper range, then look for specific value?
Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

If I understand this correctly, you can solve this along these lines:
Find the column matching the employee name
Search the column to see if there is a match to the date value.
If there is no match, then search the next column to the right for a matching date value.
If there is no match in the second column, then return a value to indicate failure.
This formula is going to be really long and complicated so I'll break it up as best I can. You can start by finding the column matching the employee with a match function. This will return the column number.
=match(EmployeeName, EmployeeNames, 0)
Next, we'll want to search this column with a vlookup but you have to refer to the column by column number and not by letter. To do that, use indirect(address()). Address works by using the row number and column number to refer to a cell. We'll use one for the start of the column and one for the end of the column. Plug in the match formula from above and we have the range to search.
=vlookup(DateValue,indirect(Address(1,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))):indirect(address(500,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))),1,0)
Note that I used 500 as the end of last row of the column to be searched. You can make it more if needed.
So far this formula will return the date if the date is found in the first column matching the employee name and an error if there is no match. We still have to search the second column if there wasn't a match. I like to use the iferror() function for this. Put the formula above as the first argument of the iferror and also as the second. We'll modify the second to search the next column over. Since we are using the column numbers, we can just increment over by adding 1 to the column.
=iferror(vlookup(DateValue,indirect(Address(1,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))):indirect(address(500,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))),1,0), vlookup(DateValue,indirect(Address(1,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0)+1)):indirect(address(500,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0)+1)),1,0).
Almost there, now we have to handle the error if nothing is found in the second column as well. Wrap the second vlookup in an iferror and some constant at the end.
=iferror(vlookup(DateValue,indirect(Address(1,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))):indirect(address(500,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0))),1,0),iferror( vlookup(DateValue,indirect(Address(1,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0)+1)):indirect(address(500,match(EmployeeName,EmployeeNames,0)+1)),1,0),"No Match").
When you set up the conditional formatting, you would set the formula to check if the cell value is (or is not) "No Match".