Lookups in excel are fine, at least now we have XLOOKUP but there's something depressing about an excel model which contains multiple massive grids of lookups.

Lookups in excel are fine, at least now we have XLOOKUP but there's something depressing about an excel model which contains multiple massive grids of lookups. I find such things are much easier in a real join, where you can get your data into long format then write a single line of code to manipulate meaningful named columns.