I am building a food costing database that will automatically insert prices
in costing forms in multiple tabs (for different Menu's) from a price list on
another tab. I tried using a vlookup formula inserted in "a4" referencing
cell "a1" on the costing sheet, then went to the updated prices on the
produce sheet that matched "a1" then getting the info in 3rd column and
returning that result to "A4" on the costing sheet.

here is my formula

=VLOOKUP(A247,Produce!$A$1:$C$269,3,FALSE)

The problem is that the name in "a1" has to be exactly the same and the
produce names and amount of products change weekly. Is there a way to make
the reference more or less specific so that if I have "carrot" in "a1" the
reference will just pick out "carrot" on the produce sheet and not have to
have "Carrot Jumbo peeled 50lbs (cs)" entered throughout my recipes. It would
also have to be able to recognize "baby carrot" and the same thing with
tomatoes...

I think it might be an if function, but I am better with food than with excel.

Any help would be appreciated.

Doug

To an extent, think you could try it with wildcards:
=VLOOKUP("*"&A247&"*",Produce!$A$1:$C$269,3,FALSE)

But for say: "baby carrot", you would probably need to input that phrase as
the base lookup value in A247 instead of just "carrot", to distinguish it
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
Downloads:17,000 Files:358 Subscribers:55
xdemechanik
---
"chefdoug" wrote:
I am building a food costing database that will automatically insert prices
in costing forms in multiple tabs (for different Menu's) from a price list on
another tab. I tried using a vlookup formula inserted in "a4" referencing
cell "a1" on the costing sheet, then went to the updated prices on the
produce sheet that matched "a1" then getting the info in 3rd column and
returning that result to "A4" on the costing sheet.

here is my formula

=VLOOKUP(A247,Produce!$A$1:$C$269,3,FALSE)

The problem is that the name in "a1" has to be exactly the same and the
produce names and amount of products change weekly. Is there a way to make
the reference more or less specific so that if I have "carrot" in "a1" the
reference will just pick out "carrot" on the produce sheet and not have to
have "Carrot Jumbo peeled 50lbs (cs)" entered throughout my recipes. It would
also have to be able to recognize "baby carrot" and the same thing with
tomatoes...

I think it might be an if function, but I am better with food than with excel.

Any help would be appreciated.

Doug

Thank you for your reply, I tried the wildcards, but I still got #N/A response.

Any other Ideas?

"Max" wrote:

To an extent, think you could try it with wildcards:
=VLOOKUP("*"&A247&"*",Produce!$A$1:$C$269,3,FALSE)

But for say: "baby carrot", you would probably need to input that phrase as
the base lookup value in A247 instead of just "carrot", to distinguish it
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
Downloads:17,000 Files:358 Subscribers:55
xdemechanik
---
"chefdoug" wrote:
I am building a food costing database that will automatically insert prices
in costing forms in multiple tabs (for different Menu's) from a price list on
another tab. I tried using a vlookup formula inserted in "a4" referencing
cell "a1" on the costing sheet, then went to the updated prices on the
produce sheet that matched "a1" then getting the info in 3rd column and
returning that result to "A4" on the costing sheet.

here is my formula

=VLOOKUP(A247,Produce!$A$1:$C$269,3,FALSE)

The problem is that the name in "a1" has to be exactly the same and the
produce names and amount of products change weekly. Is there a way to make
the reference more or less specific so that if I have "carrot" in "a1" the
reference will just pick out "carrot" on the produce sheet and not have to
have "Carrot Jumbo peeled 50lbs (cs)" entered throughout my recipes. It would
also have to be able to recognize "baby carrot" and the same thing with
tomatoes...

I think it might be an if function, but I am better with food than with excel.

Any help would be appreciated.

Doug

It should have worked ok
Maybe try it again? I'm out of other ideas
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
Downloads:17,400 Files:358 Subscribers:55
xdemechanik
---
"chefdoug" wrote in message
...
Thank you for your reply, I tried the wildcards, but I still got #N/A
response.

Any other Ideas?