Please excuse the formatting of my last post. The phone numbers should be
under the phone number field in Excel file 2. as well should the word
"number" be right after the word "phone".

Also, to verify: Is reference# the first cell of the new helper colum I
created in the first Excel file correct?.

"Toppers" wrote:

Bill,
One way is add an extra ("helper") column in your main file and
then use VLOOKUP to retrieve the actual telehone number.

The VLOOKUP statement would be of the form:

=VLOOKUP(reference#,[Telephone.xls]data!A1:b1000,2,false)

Where <reference# is cell containing this data e.g. E2
<Telephone.xls is your telephone data w/book
<Data is sheet contain data which is in columns A1 to B100, (reference
number & telephone number)

Put this formula in your helper column and copy down

If successful, copy/past special=values and replace/delete your reference
number column.

HTH

"Bkana" wrote:


Hello all,

If this is not the correct forum - please re-direct me.

I have two Excel files. One file contains information on roughly 10,000
people, including name, address, phone number, and a person id, the person id
being the unique identifier for each person. In this file the phone number
field contains a number (NOT THE ACTUAL PHONE NUMBER) that is like a pointer
or place-holder for the actual phone number.

To find what that person's phone number is I have to "link out" to the other
excel file, look up that place-holder number (in field #1) , and get the
phone number( in field #2), respectively. I would like to replace that
"place-holder" number with the actual phone number that belongs to that
person in that first file. How can I do this?

Will provide more info, if need be,

Thank you,
Bill