Vlookup within date range

I need to do a Vlookup, but there are many entries with the same employee number.

Example - Bob who's employee number is 12345678 is planned to go away Jan-Mar 08, Jun-Aug and then again Dec-Feb 09. When I do a Vlookup for him I get a return of the first date, but I need to stipulate which date is displayed in the report. Basically, I require the date he is away after todays date and not later than 3 months from now, which would return the Jun-Aug date.

Hope you can help.

Regards,

Mac

What I'm after is a Vlookup formula which returns the date from today until 3 months and then ignore all the other dates that the individual is away

This example shows you how you can filter your list to only get a match on a date within the next 90 days. What I have done is to insert a new employee number column that only displays the employee number if the matching date is within the requested range. Then I have used this new column as the lookup range for the vlookup formula.

The vlookup still displays the first match if there are more matches within the next 90 days. You can easily get the correct result by just sorting your list by the date column. If sorting the list is not an option, you need another approach. Let me know, and I will try to figure something out.

Many thanks Bjornar. Your example is exactly what I was looking for.

Kind regards,

Mac