help with dates and lookups

[Guest]

Please can someone help

I have a table, of dates and references. What I want to be able to do is
input a date, and it then lookup to see what the refernce should be for this.

IE
Date Reference
10/01/2006 Period 1
16/02/2006 Period 2
19/03/2006 Period 3
25/04/2006 Period 4

So if I enter a date of 25/02/2006 it brings back PERIOD 2 as this date is
greater than Period 2 but less than Period 3.

Many Thanks in advance for your assistance.

 

[Guest]

assuming you know how to to use lookup table, i would name your periods table
as "periods" and assuming the date you want to put into a period is located
in A1, the formula is =vlookup(A1, periods,2,true).
this will return the period the date falls in, several chances for errors,
if date is before first period or after last period.
reno

 

[Guest]

The date could be any date I just need to know what period the date previous
or equal to this equals. This date will not necessarily be in the first
column.