Urgent help with a formula

[Frances Reese]

If I have column labels at the top of my work sheet and
have a list of items, how do I write a formula that will
give me the result of the name of the column label the
item is found in?
Column Labels: Fruits Nuts Candy Unknown
Almond Skittles Apple
Item Category
Skittles return "Candy"
Apple return "Unknown:
Almond Find "Almond" in B2:E10, then return the Column
Label (Nuts) where "Almond" is located.

 

[peter]

Hi,
I don't know any way in excel to find an item within a
matrix(row/col).
Re-think your design. Put your data in two
columns,item...category. Then use vlookup to return the
category of the selected item. At the risk of entering
the data twice, once in the columns and once in the
matrix, you could write a macro that would populate the
matrix with the data from the columns.

peter