What is an excel formula that will return me the last row number of a cell within a range that contains specific data?

Question

I have a spreadsheet that will default with values of "No". Over time, these values will be changed to "Yes".

I need a formula (no VB, please, VB is useless to me) that will get me the row number of the last "Yes" in a range of cells so that I can look up the value in that row number of another column to retrieve text to display.

Let's say I have this in one column (call it 1): "Yes", "Yes", "Yes", "No", "No"

And this in the referenced column (call it 2) 1, 1, 2, 2, 3

When all is said and done, INDIRECT(THE_FORMULA_HERE, 2) should retrieve me the value "2". And when all "Yes" are placed, it would change to "3", etc.

Answer 1

Assuming the data is contiguous (i.e. "Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No" but not "Yes, Yes, No, Yes, No") then you can use the following formula:

=INDIRECT("B" & (COUNTIF(A2:A6, "Yes")+1))

This is the data I used:

   | A      B
---------------
 1 | Yes    1
 2 | Yes    1
 3 | Yes    2
 4 | No     2
 5 | No     3

There are other ways to do it if you can add a sequence column, then use COUNTIF and VLOOKUP to do the same thing.

Answer 2

I'd use INDEX rather than INDIRECT as it is non-volatile, but the concept would be almost identical if all the Yes answers are contiguous and not split by No's.

=INDEX(B1:B100,COUNTIF(A1:A100,"Yes"))

With 100 replaced by however many rows you really have