title: Excel functions to return first row or first column from a range? (for a better 2 way lookup in table of data)
body: <p>So I'm trying to do the classic 2 way lookup from a table of data, ie:</p>
  
  <pre><code>     Jan-00   Feb-00   Mar-00
  Joe
  Bill
  Steve
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So, I want to look up the value for "Joe" for "Mar-00".</p>
  
  <p>This type of lookups are typically done using a combination of the INDEX and MATCH functions.  The drawback of this approach is that MATCH can only act upon a 1 dimensional range, so in a large spreadsheet with lots of tables, you end up having to define 3 ranges per table instead of one (one for data, one for header row, one for left column).</p>
  
  <p>I'd like to be able to do something like this:  </p>
  
  <pre><code>index(data1,match("Mar-00",getrow(mydata,1)),match("Joe",getcolumn(mydata,1)))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there anything like this in excel (or, an entirely different way of doing this, perhaps some new feature in excel)?</p>