VLOOKUP on two or more criteria columns

If you have ever tried to use a VLOOKUP function with two or more criteria columns, you've quickly discovered that it just wasn't built for that purpose. Fortunately, there is another function that may work as an alternative to VLOOKUP depending on what you want to return:

• SUMIFS. Perform multi-column lookups when the return value is numeric.
• VLOOKUP and CONCATENATE. Perform multi-column lookups when the return value is a text string.