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Lookup & Reference

Case-sensitive lookup: match uppercase vs lowercase IDs with EXACT

Combine XLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH with EXACT when short alphanumeric IDs differ only by letter case.

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Why standard lookups ignore letter case

By default, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, and MATCH treat "abc" and "ABC" as identical. Passing a range to EXACT(E2, A2:A5) produces a boolean array of case-sensitive comparisons, and XLOOKUP(TRUE, EXACT(E2, A2:A5), B2:B5, "Not found") returns the exact-case row.

If no code matches with the exact uppercase/lowercase pattern, XLOOKUP returns the fallback string.

=XLOOKUP(TRUE, EXACT(E2, A2:A5), B2:B5, "Not found")

Try the example

Use the original values or change them to test your understanding.