We think this user is doing something smart, and we mean that sincerely. They have already built a dropdown that controls which part of the annual budget their report pulls from. That is a real step forward. The problem they describe next is the kind that quietly eats hours over months: manually updating six cells each month with the name of the month, then inevitably missing one and having a report that says "January" in February. Their instinct to solve it with an INDEX/MATCH on a hidden sheet is not clunky. It is exactly the kind of practical, modular thinking that separates people who tolerate spreadsheets from people who make them work.
The user calls their own solution a brute force method, and we understand the hesitation. There is a widespread belief that elegant solutions must involve complex formulas or add-ins. But here is the truth: a hidden sheet with twelve rows of text is not brute force. It is a clean data structure. The dropdown already exists. The logic already exists. What is missing is a simple formula that reads that dropdown and returns the right text. The user has already done the hard part, identifying the repetitive manual step and creating a control mechanism. The remaining step is just wiring. If they want to make it feel less like a workaround, they can use a single SWITCH or IFS formula in each of those six cells, pointing at their dropdown. No hidden sheet required. But if a hidden sheet feels more maintainable, that is fine too.
What we see here is someone who is ready to stop editing cells and start designing systems. The user is not looking for a revolutionary tool. They are looking for a method that respects their time. That is exactly the right attitude. The best productivity gains do not come from adopting a new platform. They come from noticing a pattern of friction and deciding to eliminate it. This user noticed. Now they just need permission to trust their own solution. So here it is: your INDEX/MATCH idea is not clunky. It is a perfectly sound way to turn a manual task into an automated one. Build it. Then watch how many other small, repetitive edits in your workflow suddenly become solvable the same way.