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Excel / Formulas and functions / Reference / CHOOSE function

CHOOSE function
Excel for Office 365, Excel for Office 365 for Mac, Excel 2019, Excel 2016, More...

This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the CHOOSE function in Microsoft Excel.

Description
Uses index_num to return a value from the list of value arguments. Use CHOOSE to select one of up
to 254 values based on the index number. For example, if value1 through value7 are the days of the
week, CHOOSE returns one of the days when a number between 1 and 7 is used as index_num.

Syntax
CHOOSE(index_num, value1, [value2], ...)

The CHOOSE function syntax has the following arguments:

Index_num    Required. Specifies which value argument is selected. Index_num must be a number

between 1 and 254, or a formula or reference to a cell containing a number between 1 and 254.

If index_num is 1, CHOOSE returns value1; if it is 2, CHOOSE returns value2; and so on.

If index_num is less than 1 or greater than the number of the last value in the list, CHOOSE
returns the #VALUE! error value.
 If index_num is a fraction, it is truncated to the lowest integer before being used.

Value1, value2, ...     Value 1 is required, subsequent values are optional. 1 to 254 value
arguments from which CHOOSE selects a value or an action to perform based on index_num. The
arguments can be numbers, cell references, defined names, formulas, functions, or text.

Remarks
If index_num is an array, every value is evaluated when CHOOSE is evaluated.

The value arguments to CHOOSE can be range references as well as single values.

For example, the formula:

=SUM(CHOOSE(2,A1:A10,B1:B10,C1:C10))

evaluates to:

=SUM(B1:B10)

which then returns a value based on the values in the range B1:B10.

The CHOOSE function is evaluated first, returning the reference B1:B10. The SUM function is then
evaluated using B1:B10, the result of the CHOOSE function, as its argument.

Examples
Copy the example data in the following table, and paste it in cell A1 of a new Excel worksheet. For
formulas to show results, select them, press F2, and then press Enter. If you need to, you can adjust
the column widths to see all the data.

Data  

1st Nails

2nd Screws

3rd Nuts

Finished Bolts
Data  

Formula Description Result

=CHOOSE(2,A2,A3,A4,A5) Value of the second list argument (value of cell A3) 2nd

=CHOOSE(4,B2,B3,B4,B5) Value of the fourth list argument (value of cell B5) Bolts

=CHOOSE(3,"Wide",115,"world",8) Value of the third list argument world

Example 2

Data

23

45

12

10

Formula Description (Result) Result

=SUM(A2:CHOOSE(2,A3,A4,A5)) Sums the range A2:A4. The CHOOSE function returns 80

A4 as the second part of the range for the SUM
function.
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