Excel find the content of cell using row and column header

[Guest]

Let say I have a matrix with month as header row (2005-10, 2005-11, etc... )
and sales person as column header (Smith, Jack etc...). the value of the
matrix is sales amount :
2005-10 2005-11
Smith 500 300
Jack 25 33

can I create a formula that finds the intersection of a row and a column.
for ex. find 33 with is : intersection of Jack and 2005-11.
thx

 

[Guest]

Yes. This is rally covered well in:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/lookups.htm

 

[Guest]

If you select the entire range, including the date and name headers and use
Insert->Names->Create, Excel will fabricate range names for each column and
each row. The first row of data will be named "Smith" & the second row
"Jack." The dates will handled a little differently. Excel will add an
underscore to the front and change the hyphen to another underscore.

Once that is done, you can get Smith's sales for 2005-11 with the formula

=_2005_11 Smith

NOTE THE SPACE BETWEEN THE 2 NAMES!!!

Jack's sales for the prior month can be gotten by

=Jack _2005_10

Again there's a space between the two range names.