Normalizing Data in Excel with Index/Match

Spreadsheets are powerful/friendly because they don't constrain how we structure our data.

However, this sometimes results in the same information appear over and over in a column because it applies to every row.

For example, if we had a worksheet containing training hours it might look something like this.

Training

Date	Class	Employee ID	Employ Name	Department

The problem is the name of the employee and department have nothing to do with training. Nevertheless, it will be repeated for each row.

If you've used Excel's vlookup, you're likely thinking this solves the problem. It does, but there's a better way using Index and Match. It might appear more complex at first, but vlookup can bring its own complexity.