Look up

Hello Keith,

Thank you for your question about Wildcards.

The option for Wildcards appears in the XLOOKUP function. Suppose you want to return the salary for a member of staff called Pamela but you know her as Pam. If 'Pamela' is in the dataset to be extracted then do the following:

1. Type Pam* in the lookup value cell eg. B3

2. Let's say the list of staff containing the name Pamela is in column D and the salaries are all listed in column E

3. In another cell type =XLOOKUP(B3,D:D,E:E,"staff not found",2)

- where "staff not found" replaces any errors as a result of any name in B3 that is not in the staff list. The 5th argument showing 2 means you are asking Excel to perform a Wildcard selection so the XLOOKUP will find the first instance of any name beginning with Pam and return her salary

I hope this makes sense and if you have any further questions please post them here in the forum

Kind Regards
Martin