Holy CRAP!! That answer was way more clear than I expected. I am amazed
at how simple it was. You are GOOD, You are VERY GOOD!! I am told to
help others with this function, but never really grasped the practical
use of it, but your explanation REALLY helped.



THX

JulieD Wrote:
Hi

this function is used all the time, often to overcome the limitations
of the
IF statement ... for example, say you are creating an invoice workbook
..
you have all your products and their prices on sheet 2 ... on sheet 1
you
want to select the product the customer wants and have the price
automatically fill in ... this is where VLOOKUP comes in

the four parameters of VLOOKUP are (in my words):-
=VLOOKUP(thing_to_look_up,table_with_item_and_answ er,column_number_of_answer,approx_match?)

so in my above example the cell reference of the product the customer
wants
on sheet 1 (say A5) is my "thing_to_look_up"
sheet 2 columns A & B (where i have my products & prices) is the
"table_with_item_and_answer"
column B has the information i want returned by the formula, so 2 (2nd
column of table) is my "column_number_of_answer"
and
as i want an exact match i type 0 or FALSE in the fourth parameter ...
giving me
=VLOOKUP(A5,Sheet2!$A$2:$B$500,2,0)

the HLOOKUP works the same way, except that instead of having the data
in
two columns i have it in two rows, top row is the product and 2nd row
is the
price (but as there's only 256 columns i'ld have problem as i've got
499
products).

hope this makes some sense.

--
Cheers
JulieD
check out www.hcts.net.au/tipsandtricks.htm
....well i'm working on it anyway
"Phlogiston2312" wrote
in
message . com...-

Does anybody know what vlookup and hlookup do, and how do you
determine
the variables that need to be imputted into the formula. I read the
help, and it left me scratching my head, and seemed very cryptic.
What, if any is the "REAL WORLD" application of this function???


--
Phlogiston2312-


--
Phlogiston2312