Suppose you have an Excel spreadsheet with a single column A and 52 rows. The value in each row's cell represents a playing card, for example K-Diamonds or 3-Spades.

The basic syntax of VLOOKUP is straightforward. You need four parameters to make it work: the lookup value, the table array, the column index number, and the range lookup.

No Need to Count Columns One key difference between VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP is that the former requires me to specify a column index number where the result will be found, whereas the latter doesn't.

Column Index Number: This is the column number in the table array from which you want to retrieve a value. The first column is 1, the second column is 2, and so on.