This is the first time I have looked at this so please excuse my ignorance and the many questions that are sure to follow. I also know that this would be better suited to a db of some sort but due to manpower cutbacks we can't convert this at this time.

I need to look up data related to a key (column A) that may be on any worksheet in a spreadsheet. I need to have some type of front end interface for entering of the key information and I only want to display the relevant information in return then close that view and return to the front end interface.

Attached is an example of the data.

By entering "2092" I want to return the data from Sheet1, Row 4, columns A thru L.

By entering "2478" I want to return the data from Sheet2, Rows 4 & 5, columns A thru P.

Is there a good way to do this in Excel and where do I need to start?

The data in the data sheets need to be sorted in decending order for VLOOKUP to work.

However, it would be important to understand and somehow define some basis for the formula to know a uniform reason why 2478 shows data form a different sheet and why it gets extra columns.

Try index fucntion ,
INDEX(array,row_num,column_num)
returns the value of a specified cell or array of cells within array.

Try index fucntion ,
INDEX(array,row_num,column_num)
returns the value of a specified cell or array of cells within array.

Sorry, but I have not a clue as to how to do this. Care to take a look at the posted example spreadsheet and apply an example to it?