An alternative to a Vlookup

[DukeRollo]

I need help with the following scenario.

Suppose I have an excel spreadsheet with the following properties.
In column A, I have a list of names.
In column B, I have a list of order statuses.

The same name may be in column A once or multiple times. For example, "John Doe" may appear on row 3 with "Put in order" in column B. Then John Doe may appear 2 or three more times in say... rows 10, 17, and 21 with "Called about order", "Picked up order" and "Filled out survey".

Suppose I want to know the most recent thing John Doe did, how would I figure that out?

A vlookup won't work because his name is on there multiple times. In the above example, I want to be able to put in another cell "John Doe" and get back "Filled out survey" because that's the most recent thing that happened. Assuming column B only has 3 or 5 different options, how would I get that "John Doe / Filled out survey" information?

[CARACALLA]

Post a small Excel sheet (not a picture) showing realistic & representative sample data WITHOUT confidential information (10-20 rows, not thousands...) and some manually calculated results. For a new thread (1st post), scroll to Manage Attachments, otherwise scroll down to GO ADVANCED, click, and then scroll down to MANAGE ATTACHMENTS and click again. Now follow the instructions at the top of that screen.

[DukeRollo]

Can't do that, I'm afraid. The actual spreadsheet has client data. I can only speak abstractly and use "John Doe". Not trying to cause any data breaches.

[protonLeah]

In the cell with the VLookup use, like:

=LOOKUP(2,1/SEARCH(NameList,LookupName),ActionsList)

modified with appropriate range addresses