Formula to identify column heading

Folks at Excel Forum –

New to the Forum here.

I have a simple (I hope) question about how to reference a cell (column heading) in a table, using a formula that finds the minimum value within a row of cells in that same table.

Example: The table contains four columns with column headings “First”, “Second”, “Third”, “Fourth”, and a row containing numbers; i.e., 3.3, 2.4, 0, 9.5 respectively. I am using the SMALL formula to identify the smallest number non-zero number in the row, in a cell at the end of the row:

=SMALL(B1:B4,COUNTIF(B1:B4,0)+1)

I’d like to enter a formula in an adjacent cell to also return the column heading (either as text or a number) of that smallest number. For the example, the smallest number is 2.4, and the corresponding column heading would be Second.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

-R

Hi & welcome to the board.
Your formula is returning the smallest non zero in a column, not a row. That said you can replace your formula with

Formula:

=MIN(FILTER(A2:D2,A2:D2<>0))

and then use

Formula:

=FILTER($A$1:$D$1,A2:D2=F2)

Where F2 is the cell with the smallest number