This user inherited a messy spreadsheet and just wants to get out of the weeds. The real problem isn't their XLOOKUP idea or their attempt at a drop-down history log. It's that they are trying to make a collaboration tool out of a file format that was never designed for it.
The core issue here is the "action updates" column where people overwrite progress each month. That single cell is the source of all the friction. Every time someone updates it, the previous month's context disappears. The user is then forced to build a second sheet, a manual history log, just to recover information that was already lost. They are essentially building a time machine to fix a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. Their instinct to create a "live view" with XLOOKUP is clever, but it's a workaround for a tool that treats data as static, not dynamic.
What this user needs is a system where the history is automatic, not something they have to architect themselves. An AI-native spreadsheet understands that a column full of overwritten text is actually a history of events. It can surface the latest status while keeping every previous update accessible with a single click. There is no need for a separate log sheet or complex lookup formulas. The tool should handle versioning, track who changed what and when, and present a clean, current view without burying the past. The user's time is better spent understanding project risks than writing formulas to preserve data that should never have been overwritten.
The practical takeaway is straightforward. Before building elaborate workarounds inside a legacy tool, ask if the tool itself is the bottleneck. The user's frustration isn't a sign of limited skillset. It is a sign of a tool that demands manual effort for tasks that ought to be automatic. Stop designing spreadsheets to compensate for their own limitations. Choose a tool where the history is built in, the live view is the default, and the data works for you instead of the other way around.