In MS Excel, a formula that looks for a value in the leftmost column of a table and then returns a value in the same row for a specific column is called:

In MS Excel, a formula that looks for a value in the leftmost column of a table and then returns a value in the same row for a specific column is called:

Explanation

The VLOOKUP (Vertical Lookup) function in MS Excel searches for a value in the leftmost column of a table and returns a value in the same row from a specified column. 

For example 

This is one of the most commonly used functions for finding and retrieving data in structured tables.