excel - Give column number of first column with symbol -

so have sheet following:

row    1    2    3    4    5    6 1      x                   2           x              3      x         x        4                     x 5           x              x 6                               x 

and have sheet want encapsulate data with:

1st appeared 1 2 1 4 2 6 

i'm trying construct second sheet. there way each row start @ column 2 , go ith column , display first 'x' appears. (note can assume every row have @ least 1 'x' when row , column meet forming diagonal down entire first sheet) [note first spreadsheet 5,000 x 5,000 hence why i'd nice formula instead of doing things hand =)]

thanks in advance!

the match function return relative position in either row or column. use formula in second worksheet.

=iferror(match("x", sheet1!1:1, 0) - 1, 0) 

fill down retrieve correct column index or 0 if not found. 1 subtracted since hte want position relative column b. iferror function return default 0 no match found. substitute "" in place of 0 if want nothing displayed.