Finding Top 5 Performers in Excel

I recently came across with a problem asked by one of my friend.  He wanted me to create a function in Excel to know the Top 5 sales performer in his team.  I suggested him a easy way of sorting the data in descending order based on sales figures but he wanted to keep the data intact and know the result.

See the image below to visualize what he was looking for:

To provide him with an answer I used three Excel function namely:

• INDEX(array, row_number, column_number)
• MATCH(value, arrray, match_type)
• LARGE(array, nth_position)

Using these three powerful fucntions in conjunction, I came out with a solution and want to share it with you as well. The formula goes like this

E2: =INDEX($A$2:$A$12,MATCH(LARGE($B$2:$B$12,D2),$B$2:$B$12,0),1)

I dragged the formula till E6 and I got the result required, my Top 5 Sales Performers !

Now let me explain the formula's used here, basically LARGE function helps us in finding k-th largest value in our sales data.  Say fourth or fifth largest sales figure.

Using the value given by LARGE function, we are using MATCH function to know the relative position of the value in our sales figures.

Lastly INDEX function is giving us the name of the Sales Person. That's it !!

I hope you'll get benefitted by using this formula. "HAPPY LEARNING"

SAMPLE FILE