Question

I have an excel sheet, where cells A1-C20==INT(RAND()*10). This is my data range. Cell E1=1, E2=2, E3=3, etc. These are the values I am trying to find. I set cell F1==MATCH(E1,A:C,0), F2==MATCH(E1,A:C,0), etc.

However, all the MATCH functions return #N/A, because the input range is multi-dimensional. How can I test whether a given value (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) exists in a multidimensional range (A1-C20)?

/edit: This function works, but is more than I need. Is there any way to make it return just TRUE or FALSE, depending on if the lookup value is in the range?

Function OzgridLookup(Find_Val As Variant, Occurrence As Long, Table_Range As Range, _
 Offset_Cols As Long, Optional Column_Lookin As Long, Optional Row_Offset As Long) As Variant

Dim lLoop As Long
Dim FoundCell As Range

    If Column_Lookin = 0 Then 'No column # specified
        With Table_Range
            'Top left cell has Find_Val & Occurrence is 1
            If Table_Range.Cells(1, 1) = Find_Val And Occurrence = 1 Then
              OzgridLookup = .Cells(1, 1)(1, Offset_Cols + 1)
              Exit Function 'All done :)
            Else 'No column # specified so search all for _
                    nth Occurrence reading left to right
             Set FoundCell = .Cells(1, 1) 'Set cell variable for Find start
                For lLoop = 1 To Occurrence 'Loop as many times as Occurrences _
                 and each time Set "FoundCell" to start next Find from
                  Set FoundCell = _
                        Table_Range.Find(What:=Find_Val, After:=FoundCell, _
                            LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlWhole, _
                            SearchOrder:=xlRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext)
                Next lLoop
            End If
        End With
    Else 'column # specified
      With Table_Range.Columns(Column_Lookin) 'Work with column # specified
        Set FoundCell = .Cells(1, 1) 'Set cell variable for Find start
            For lLoop = 1 To Occurrence 'Loop as many times as Occurrences _
                 and each time Set "FoundCell" to start next Find from
                  Set FoundCell = _
                        Table_Range.Find(What:=Find_Val, After:=FoundCell, _
                            LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlWhole, _
                            SearchOrder:=xlRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext)
            Next lLoop
      End With
    End If

    OzgridLookup = FoundCell.Offset(Row_Offset, Offset_Cols)

End Function

Answer 1

You can use COUNTIF to do this since you only want to know whether the number is present (not its location).

=COUNTIF(A:C,E1)>0

This will return “TRUE” if it is present, “FALSE” if it is not.

Just for fun, here’s a worksheet function solution that returns the cell address that matches the lookup value. It uses the fact that you are only searching in 3 columns.

=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(E1,A:A,0)),IF(ISERROR(MATCH(E1,B:B,0)),IF(ISERROR(MATCH(E1,C:C,0)),"Not found.","C"&MATCH(E1,C:C,0)),"B"&MATCH(E1,B:B,0)),"A"&MATCH(E1,A:A,0))

I thought I’d also throw in a VBA solution that can return the match location inside a (contiguous) range. It looks at columns one at a time from left to right and returns the address of the first match found.

Public Function MDMATCH(srchfor As String, lookin As Range) As String

Application.Volatile
Dim RngArray() As Variant
Dim topleft As String
Dim tmpval As String

topleft = lookin.Address
topleft = Left(topleft, InStr(topleft, ":") - 1)
tmpval = "Not found."
RngArray = lookin

For i = 1 To UBound(RngArray, 2)
    If tmpval = "Not found." Then
        For j = 1 To UBound(RngArray, 1)
            If RngArray(j, i) = srchfor Then
                tmpval = Range(topleft).Offset(j - 1, i - 1).Address
                Exit For
            End If
        Next j
    Else
        Exit For
    End If
Next i
MDMATCH = tmpval
End Function