Comments on: Excel Defunct Defaults

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:16:18 +0000

How odd that TRUE should be 1, rather than -1?

I often use the TRUE argument with a VLOOKUP to bracket calculated items – e.g. when ageing something, then group into an appropriate category. Looks like Match would do the same thing for me – is either appreciably quicker?

teylyn – I think that's rather a brutal approach!

By: teylyn

teylyn — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:13:06 +0000

I think it's actually a good thing that the MATCH and VLOOKUP last argument defaults to 1. That avoids a lot of error messages for people who don't know how to use the functions properly. Leaving out the last argument will always provide them with a value, and if they don't cotton on to the fact that it may actually not be the correct result, well, that's what they deserve. It helps conquer the learning curve if you hit your toes hard a few times with that situation.

I actually prefer writing out the FALSE or TRUE in VLOOKUP, rather than using 1 or 0. Although I have to type a few more characters, it's not such a big deal, and with the parameter suggestions that Excel 2007 and later pops up, it's just a "down arrow" and "tab" to complete, so only one key stroke more than typing a 1 or a 0.

In a long and nested formula I appreciate all the help I can get when I need to go back and review or rework it, so if I see a FALSE or TRUE jump out at me from a VLOOKUP, I much more readily recognise what the VLOOKUP is supposed to be doing. If it were 0 or 1, I might need to look a bit harder to see what the formula does.

Then again, I always use 0 or 1, not TRUE or FALSE with MATCH.

But I NEVER, EVER omit it.

There should be an Option Explicit for functions that ensures that all parameters are spelled out.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:10:17 +0000

Interesting article. I find it also very interesting that always the "1" is the default value (in the MATCH and VLOOKUP functions described above).

Maybe it's easier to program our lovely spreadsheet application with 1 as a default option for "everything"

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:34:10 +0000

Very interesting stuff. Thanks alot.

By: jim cone

jim cone — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:01:13 +0000

When using match in VBA…
if the list is sorted, then a match type of 1 or (-1) is much faster. It can even be faster when sorting the list, matching and then resorting the list.

By: datapig

datapig — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:28:28 +0000

Elias: How incredibly strange. I did not know that.

By: Elias

Elias — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:17:28 +0000

However, it's different if you put the comma at the end w/o parameters.

This VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A1:C100,3,FALSE)

Would be the same as this VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A1:C100,3,)

Regards

By: datapig

datapig — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:14:05 +0000

DaveM: Good point. I bet your'e right. Backwards compatibility probably had alot to do with the placement of defaults.

I had never thought of that.

By: DaveM

DaveM — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:03:41 +0000

Remembering back to the days of early versions of Lotus 123 I'm pretty sure that vlookup didn't have the exact match option, ie you always had to sort your source data and got the closest match. Can't remember whether this was the case for early versions of Excel though. But maybe when they introduced the exact match option they wanted backward compatibility.