How to look up value in a column, and assign specific entries - excel

Question

I have a sheet in Excel where the columns contain different names of people that are in different teams in my department (i.e. Names in Column 1 are in Team 1).
For another sheet, I need to have a formula that achieves the following:If I write a name in Cell B2 that can be found in the first column of that other sheet (Team 1), Excel should populate cell B6 with "Team 1".
If instead, the name I wrote is found in the second column, then the text should read "Team 2".
I've tried a couple of different formulas w/o success, and stringing a lot of IF and OR functions together is way too cumbersome. Anybody has a better solution?

Answer 1

If you need this formula for more then only two column then id use the formula
=INDEX(Sheet1!C1:G1,SUMPRODUCT((Sheet1!C2:G6=B1)*COLUMN(Sheet1!C2:G6)))
Say you have a set-up like:
And in B1 of Sheet2 you enter Name3, you want it to return TEAM1 as shown below:
The only catch to this formula is that you will need to tell it how many columns are before your data so if you have a table more like:
Then you need to tell the formula that there are 2 rows before your data starts, your new formula will be
=INDEX(Sheet1!C1:G1,SUMPRODUCT((Sheet1!C2:G6=B1)*COLUMN(Sheet1!C2:G6))-2)
Notice the -2 before the last parenthesis this is to indicate that there are 2 columns BEFORE you data.
and the new result for looking up say NAME20 would become as follows:
*EXPLANATION: *
The formula works as follows , I will do it all on one page for easier viewing and instead of Sheet2!B2 and B6 I will use G2, and G6 on the same sheet as the data.
First we look at all values in the Range A1:E6 and find the one with the matching name so we use
=A1:E6=G2
Now when you enter this into the cell you will recieve a #VALUE,but if you goto the Formula Bar and press F9 it will shwo you the full value of the formula
{FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE;FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE}
In this we know that one cell contains the Name we searched for, this is represented by the TRUE
Now when using a formula like SUMPRODUCT, FALSE = 0 and TRUE = 1
So to get the column we mutiply every result by the column they are in.
=SUMPRODUCT((A1:E6=G2)*COLUMN(A1:E6))
So any cells that don't =G2 are FAlSE or 0, and when you multiply the column of that cell by 0 (because false = 0) it will simply result in 0. But for the one cell that IS TRUE or 1 When you multiply the column of that cell by 1 (because TRUE = 1) The product will be the cells column number
So as shown in the picture when looking for NAME13 the result of the sumproduct is 3 (its column)
Then to return the TEAM for that name, we use the INDEX function will return the value in a cell at the given cordinates.
In this case we want the value from A1:E1 that is in the same column as the Name we matched. When looked at as an Array A1:E1 looks like
{"TEAM1","TEAM2","TEAM3","TEAM4","TEAM5"}
And we want to return the value in that array at the same position as the column number of our cell, Minus any nonincluded column before the data, thus the reason for the -2 in the secon example I gave you.
So:
=INDEX(A1:E1,SUMPRODUCT((A1:E6=G2)*COLUMN(A1:E6)))
In this example excel interprets this formula as
Return the 3rd value (the 3 comes from the sumproduct as explained earlier) in the list of value from A1:E1. And that value would be TEAM3.

Answer 2

use a MATCH() or VLOOKUP() function inside an IF(). SOmthing like:
IF(NOT(ISERROR(MATCH(...)));"Team1";"")
Did you know you can browse functions by catergoty (such as Search), just clikc the fx left of your formula bar and use the drop down box. Each formula comes with a description with usually rather clear information...