How to find the lowest value? [Quick tip]

Lets say you are the head of purchasing department at Big Corp Co. You are obviously very busy. Every day starting with a large cup of coffee and ends with a big smile, as you save your company thousands of $s by negotiating best deals, finding best providers and being awesome. Today, let me share a small Excel tip with you that will make you even more awesome. Finding a provider with lowest value: Lets say you are looking at a table like below and want to find-out lowest priced providers for each service. To find providers with lowest value: Find the least amount for each service. Assuming the services are in the range C5:G5, use =MIN(C5:G5) to get this. Give a name to list of providers. I call mine as providers Using INDEX, MATCH formulas find the provider name with lowest amount. Like this: =INDEX(providers, MATCH(minimum_value, C5:G5, 0)) Bingo. You have the answer. Bonus tip #1: Highlighting lowest values. If you just want to highlight the lowest values, use conditional formatting. Select first row of numbers. Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Top / Bottom rules > Bottom 10 items Set to Bottom 1 and specify formatting as you want. Using format painter, copy the conditional formatting, one row at a time. Done! Bonus tip #2: Handling Ties Often 2 or more providers will tie for the bottom spot. What then? One way to handle the ties is to show the word ties when 2 or more names have lowest value. To do this, use this formula instead. =IF(COUNTIF(C5:G5, minimum_value)>1,"Ties", INDEX(providers,MATCH(minimum_value,C5:G5,0))) A formula challenge for you… Now that you know how to find the lowest value, here is a challenge for you. How do you write a formula to find which provider has maximum lowest values. In this example, the name we are looking for is TATA as they have 3 lowest values. Want to find more… look here: If you want to find more Excel formula tips and techniques, look no further. Start your journey with this and see how deep your formulas can nest. Finding maximum value subject to conditions – MAXIF Finding average of top 5 values , Closest 2 values, weighted averages More quick tips & formula tutorials