Ok, I'll give it a shot. Basically, VLOOKUP is used to find a single value
within a range of values, and then return a corresponding piece of
information about that single value from the range.

Let's use Part #s and Prices as an example. Part # is in Column A and Price
in is Column B. Say you have this table:

A B
1 abc $1.00
2 def $1.50
3 ghi $2.00

Now, you want to know how much part # "def" is. You'd use VLOOKUP like this:

=VLOOKUP("def",A1:B3,2,FALSE)

Breaking it down:

- "def" is the value we're trying to find (you could use a cell reference
here instead).
- A1:B3 is the range in which our information is stored.
- 2 is the column number from within our range that we want the info from.
- FALSE indicates that we want an Excact match rather than approximate (TRUE).

So, VLOOKUP takes our value "def" and then searches within the first column
of the range A1:B3. It finds "def" in row 2. Then, since we said we wanted
the value from Column 2, it moves over to the second column in our range (or
B) and returns the corresponding value ($1.50).

Does that make things a bit clearer?

HTH,
Elkar

"Jason" wrote:

I don't consider myself to be stupid person, & am generally well-versed in
Excel, but for some reason the VLOOKUP function baffles me.

Can someone dumb it down ;) for me? I guess--what does it do, and what are
the different components of the VLOOKUP formula...

thanks in advance!