Talk:Documentation/Calc Functions/LOOKUP

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    SF Comments

    This is a complex function and a complex wiki page. An initial review has highlighted several problems with the wiki page, some of which are listed below. However, I do not have time to complete a full review of the page at the moment and I will look again in 2021. (There may also be inaccuracies in the Help page) Some issues with the wiki page:

    (1) General. Much of the text seems to be a copy and paste from the Help page and the ODF. This is understandable but it needs some proof reading / editing to improve the logic and flow. Also, some of the ODF text is not relevant on this page.
    (2) Summary. I think that comparing with VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP is fine but would be better contained in the Additional details section. And a more thorough analysis should be given.
    (3) Arguments. The description of the SearchVector argument mentions “array object”. This needs amplification, covering both two-dimensional cell ranges and constant arrays. The same term appears in the description of ResultVector.
    (4) Arguments. The statement “See Help page entitled Handling of Empty Cells” isn’t very helpful – what information is required from this link to understand the operation of the LOOKUP function?
    (5) Additional details. Needs checking, but I suspect that Calc treats TRUE and FALSE as 1 and 0 respectively.
    (6) General. What happens if a wildcard or regular expression lookup matches multiple entries?
    (7) General. What happens if the SearchCriterion is “smaller” than the “smallest” value in the search vector?
    (8) Examples. The current examples contain errors (the return for example 1 should be 25250; example 3 does not work). Why is the final example outside the table? Maybe add examples for use of regular expressions, wildcards, and constant arrays. Also, an example is needed showing use of the function with two arguments, when the search vector is a two-dimensional cell range.

    --Stevefanning (talk) 2020-12-20T11:06:29 (UTC)