VLOOKUP &/or MATCH Function Help

I'm a noob on the forum and my basic Excel modeling skills have diminished due to my lack of use over the last couple of years. Historically, I used to use the hlookup nested in a vlookup function, but I have been seeing examples of INDEX and MATCH FUNCTIONS. If I want to create a basic formula that will return the value for 2 inputs, such as a ref # ID (around 50 unqiue IDs) in column A and then 11 different constituents in column B for each unique ref ID that have results (values) for each constituent in Column C. Say I want to pull a value (result) for a specific ID, say CC 1281444-002, and for constituent Total Nitrogen. How would I go about doing so? I've tried, unsuccessfully to use a combination of INDEX and MATCH, and VLOOKUP and MATCH.

I've searched the forums and can't seem to find the solution that works, because I keep returning NA values. I attached a sample set of the raw data which is only a portion of the raw data that populates a large spreadsheet with many more rows and columns.

Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by SteveG

Hi,

Depending on how you want it displayed why not use a pivot table? That will give you the sum of each combination of ref ID & constituent. You'll need to convert the results from a number stored as text to a number to perform the sum.

HTH
Steve

Thx Steve. These are just 3 columns and a few rows from my raw data. Preferably I'd like to be able to take the formula and pull other data from other columns. A pivot table will give me everything and sum up the values, there will be times when I only want to pull 1 variable per unique ID into a summary page.

Bump it up for more looks.

It appears as though there will only by 1 matching pair of values. Is that correct?
If so, you could use SUMIFS() but you would need your column C values to be numeric. Currently they are acting like text even though formatted as General. To do that you can type 1 in any empty cell and then copy that cell. Now select the C column range of values and Paste Special - Multiply. They will now be numeric and you can delete the 1 that you copied.

Once converted you could use:
=SUMIFS(C:C,A:A,LabID,B:B,constituent)
replace LabID and constituent with cell refs holding those values you want to check

Note that if the same pair of Lab ID and constituent values appear together more than once you'll get the sum of the values.