ExcelBanter - formula to return the value of a cell based on a looked up true reference

Take a look at the VLOOKUP() function. It essentially takes a value that
you specify, whether it be a hardcoded
number/letter/text or a value within a cell reference, and then goes and
looks it up in a table. It will look for that value in the leftmost column
of the table, and either find it or the closest match, and will then return
the corresponding value on the same row, in whatever column of that table
that you tell it to:-

Example - With the following table

D E
1 1 0.20
2 10 0.25
3 20 0.30
4 30 0.35
5 40 0.40

and with your value that you are looking up in say cell A1 (and let's assume
it is 25 for
example).

You can put a formula in pretty much any other cell, that says, take the
value in cell A1 (25), go
and look for it in the lefthand column of the table (D1:D5), and then when
you have found it (or
the lowest closest number to it), go to the second column (or whichever one
you specify if there
are more than 2) and give me the number that it is on the same row in that
column.

So, with the formula being =VLOOKUP(A1,D1:E5,2) it will first take the
value in A1 which is 25,
then go look for it in the leftmost column (D) of your specified table
(D1:E5), and it will try to
find that number. Now it isn't there, so what it will do is look for the
next lower closest
number, which in this case will be 20, and the 2 in the formula says to go
and get the value in
the 2nd column (E) in your table, that is on the same row as the 20. That
value in this case is
0.3

If you put the value 30 or 31 or 32 etc into A1 now, you will see the result
of the formula
change, because now it will either find those numbers or the lower closest
number (and in each
case there it is 30), and will subsequently return 0.35 as the corresponding
value.

Just to show you how the 2 really works in that formula, if you added one
more column to your
table so that it looked like this:-

D E F
1 1 0.20 0.15
2 10 0.25 0.25
3 20 0.30 0.35
4 30 0.35 0.45
5 40 0.40 0.55

and you actually wanted the value from Col F, then you would simpl;y change
the 2 in the formula
to a 3 to signify the third column, eg:-

=VLOOKUP(A1,D1:E5,3)

With the examples already given, 25 in A1 would return 0.35, and 30/31/32
would return 0.45

The one caveat to all of this (When getting the nearest number is OK) is
that the data in your
leftmost column must be sorted in ascending order.

There are times when you would only want it to give you a value if you had
an exact match on the
number, and in this instance you would simply add a 4th argument of 0 or
FALSE to the formula,
eg:-

=VLOOKUP(A1,D1:E5,3,0)

or

=VLOOKUP(A1,D1:E5,3,FALSE)

In these cases you do not need to have the data in your leftmost column
sorted.

--
Regards
Ken....................... Microsoft MVP - Excel
Sys Spec - Win XP Pro / XL 97/00/02/03

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"sarah" wrote in message
...
i would like to lookup a cell on a worksheet and if the
value in the cell is equal to a specific reference value
such as "test" that it will return the contents of another
cell in the same row.