How to use curly braces in non-array formula in Excel

Curly Braces are generally used in array formulas in Excel. Array formulas are entered by pressing CONTROL+SHIFT+ENTER and Excel automatically inserts curly-braces in formula. Array formulas are useful when one has to get results from multiple set of values into a single cell or range of values.

Array Formula:

For example, Consider Range A1 through A3 has text "No", "Yes" and "None". If we have to get the value of maximum length of string in cell B1, then, This can be done by Array Entering (CONTROL+SHIFT+ENTER) the below formula in cell B1.

                                                       {=MAX(LEN(A1:A3")}

which returns a value 4.

Non-Array formula with curly-braces{}

However curly-braces can be used in non-array formulas by manually inserting it. Below is an example of using curly-braces in "VLOOKUP" without array entering the formula.

                           =VLOOKUP("C",{"A",1;"B",2;"C",3},2,0)

which returns a value 3.
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