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Comment by tcho | Hacker News Reader

In case this is helpful, you can get newlines within the Excel cell itself by doing the following.

> 1. You can drag down the bottom of the formula bar/field and make it multi-line.

> 2. You can insert arbitrary newlines in an Excel formula.

> For example:

  =INDEX(
  $C$17:$S$24,
  MATCH(A6,$A$17:$A$24,0),
  MATCH(C6,$C$15:$S$15,0)
  )

I learned this from this comment from last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46341227

View on HN

The "let" function may be of interest to those wanting to excel more programmatically. There's also lambda that is interesting for the more modern excel use cases.

=Let(table,$C$17:$S$24,

rowName,A6,

colName,C6,

headerRow,$C$15:$S$15,

headerCol,$A$17:$A$24,

rowIndex,MATCH(rowName,headerCol,0),

colIndex,MATCH(colName,headerRow,0),

index(table,rowIndex,colIndex)

)

or even

=LAMBDA(table,rowNames,colNames,rowToFind,colToFind,

     LET(

          rowIndex,MATCH(rowToFind,rowNames,0),

          colIndex,MATCH(colToFind,colNames,0),

          INDEX(table,rowIndex,colIndex)

     )

)($C$17:$S$24,$A$17:$A$24,$C$15:$S$15,A6,C6)

(Also alt+enter to input the newlines)

You can also put the lambda function inside the let function, which is handy.

Also, almost everyone should be using tables instead of ranges. The references are missing a few features, but it makes formulas a brazillion times more readable.

you might enjoy "You Suck at Excel, by Joel Spolsky" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxBg4sMusIg

One of the best videos ever. This set me on the path to having respectable Excel kung fu that was the envy of all my colleagues.

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