Look up column header

[jonnyd]

Hi, I'm sure this is quite simple and I'm just not understanding the various lookup functions but here's my problem:

I have a number of columns with headers, and a tax rate in the cell below the header. I need to create a formula that will return the tax rate depending on the which column has an entry so e.g.

row 1 has column headers for 5 columns
row 2 has tax percentages for the 5 columns
row 3 has an entry of xxx in column 3

I need to put a formula in another cell that will look up which column on row 3 has an entry, and will then return the percentage for that column from row 2.

As I said I'm sure hlookup or something will do this, I just can't seem to get the **** thing working...

Any help would be much appreciated...

 

[scant]

thanks for that, unfortunately though it does not seem to work, it just displays the first value of the a1:a4 lookup headers regardless of whether there is a value in a cell or not?

i presume this was not the intended result, i think there must be an extra level of array formula required to check whether there is a value in the corresponding header array association?

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

thanks for that, unfortunately though it does not seem to work, it just displays the first value of the a1:a4 lookup headers regardless of whether there is a value in a cell or not?

i presume this was not the intended result, i think there must be an extra level of array formula required to check whether there is a value in the corresponding header array association?

I used the wrong ranges in the formula...

=INDEX($A$1:$D$1,MATCH(TRUE,A2:D2<>"",0))

Still to be confirmed with control+shift+enter.

 

[scant]

wow!

that's it by jingo!

thank you very much for your help Aladin