Is there a VLOOKUP substitute when data is not in ascending order

[VJ7777]

I need to create a report (from multiple workbooks) of activities that are to
occur "today" from a list of dates (Column A)and events (Column B). but the
dates might not be in ascending order and some cells in Column A may not
contain a date. There is one such "table" in each workbook. The report
would look like this:
Today's Date
Workbook1 Empty trash
Workbook2 (blank) because there is nothing to be done today
Workbook3 Cook dinner
Is this possible?

 

[Jason Morin]

When you set VLOOKUP to find an exact match, your data
doesn't need to be sorted. Set the 4th argument to 0.

=VLOOKUP(---,---,---,0)

HTH
Jason
Atlanta, GA

 

[Arvi Laanemets]

Hi

To avoid an error when there is nothin found:
=IF(ISERRROR(VLOOKUP(...,...,...,0)),"",VLOOKUP(...,...,...,0))
or
=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(...,...,...,0)),"",VLOOKUP(...,...,...,0))