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!

Look he

http://www.contextures.com/xlFunctions02.html

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Jason" wrote in message ...
|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!

You will generally use the VLOOKUP function when you are wanting to search
for data that is common to two sheets or areas and then return some data when
you find a match. I'll go over a sample formula:

=VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A1:C3,3,FALSE)

Let's say I have item codes in Sheet1, I want to find a matching item code
in sheet two and find the price for that item code.

The A1 part in the formula is the code I want to search for.
The next part tells it to look at Sheet2, the A1:C3 part is the range of
data you want to search. (The code you want to find and the price will be in
there somewhere)

The 3 indicates to return the result of the 3rd column over in the searched
data.
(For example sheet2 might have the item code, then a part number and then
the price, the price is the result you want thus column3)

The FALSE part means you want to find an exact match.

Does that make some sense?


"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!

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!

Thanks to both--this helps. I think I was missing the part where you're
searching in multiple sheets, & I didn't get why you would need this. Thanks
very much

"tim m" wrote:

You will generally use the VLOOKUP function when you are wanting to search
for data that is common to two sheets or areas and then return some data when
you find a match. I'll go over a sample formula:

=VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A1:C3,3,FALSE)

Let's say I have item codes in Sheet1, I want to find a matching item code
in sheet two and find the price for that item code.

The A1 part in the formula is the code I want to search for.
The next part tells it to look at Sheet2, the A1:C3 part is the range of
data you want to search. (The code you want to find and the price will be in
there somewhere)

The 3 indicates to return the result of the 3rd column over in the searched
data.
(For example sheet2 might have the item code, then a part number and then
the price, the price is the result you want thus column3)

The FALSE part means you want to find an exact match.

Does that make some sense?


"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!

You don't have to search different sheets, it can be in the same sheet,
another sheet in the same workbook or another sheet in another workbook


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom



"Jason" wrote in message
...
Thanks to both--this helps. I think I was missing the part where you're
searching in multiple sheets, & I didn't get why you would need this.
Thanks
very much

"tim m" wrote:

You will generally use the VLOOKUP function when you are wanting to
search
for data that is common to two sheets or areas and then return some data
when
you find a match. I'll go over a sample formula:

=VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A1:C3,3,FALSE)

Let's say I have item codes in Sheet1, I want to find a matching item
code
in sheet two and find the price for that item code.

The A1 part in the formula is the code I want to search for.
The next part tells it to look at Sheet2, the A1:C3 part is the range of
data you want to search. (The code you want to find and the price will
be in
there somewhere)

The 3 indicates to return the result of the 3rd column over in the
searched
data.
(For example sheet2 might have the item code, then a part number and then
the price, the price is the result you want thus column3)

The FALSE part means you want to find an exact match.

Does that make some sense?


"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!