How to use COLUMN and COLUMNS functions.

Lets look at the two functions which sound similar but give different results. COLUMN gives the position of the column and COLUMNS counts the number of columns in a range.

Let's see the syntax.

COLUMN([reference])

COLUMNS(array)

Examples
COLUMN(F2) = 6 
COLUMN() = will give the column position of the cell where the function is.

COLUMNS(F10:I14) = 4






One use of the COLUMN function is with VLOOKUP. 
Consider the example below, A table of outputs of different machines in different days.

Now I want to pull only machine 3 data to another place using VLOOKUP. First I key in Machine 3 in A6 for this example.
I need the values in column I to L to appear in column B to E.

I can key in =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,2,FALSE) in B6, =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,3,FALSE) in C5 and so on. 
But I need to keep changing the col_index_num  for every column. If you are working with a large table it can be tedious work.

Here we can use column function to make it automatic when we drag the function. The formula looks like this,

in B6 =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,COLUMN(I:I)-7,FALSE) 

COLUMN(I:I)-7 = 2

When you drag the function,
in C6 =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,COLUMN(J:J)-7,FALSE)
in D6 =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,COLUMN(K:K)-7,FALSE)
in E6 =VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,COLUMN(L:L)-7,FALSE)

You can use COLUMNS(A:G) instead of 7
=VLOOKUP($A6,$H:$L,COLUMN(I:I)-COLUMNS(A:G),FALSE)

Depending on the table location and where you want to pull the data the function for col_index_num will change. 


Please let me know comments/feedback.