We start by typing the formula “=VLOOKUP(“ and then select the cell that contains the information we want to lookup. In this step, we tell Excel what to look for. This is one of the major drawbacks of VLOOKUP, and for this reason, it’s highly recommended to use INDEX MATCH instead of VLOOKUP. In the “bad table” example you’ll see there is an error message, as the columns are not in the right order. In the above VLOOKUP example, you will see that the “good table” can easily run the function to look up “Bananas” and return their price since Bananas are located in the leftmost column.
VLOOKUP works in a left to right order, so you need to ensure that the information you want to look up is to the left of the corresponding data you want to extract. The first step to effectively using the VLOOKUP function is to make sure your data is well organized and suitable for using the function. How to use VLOOKUP in Excel Step 1: Organize the data
FALSE – Exact match, that is, if an exact match not found, then it will return an error. TRUE – Approximate match, that is, if an exact match is not found, use the closest match below the lookup_value. The argument can be set to TRUE or FALSE, which means: Range_lookup (optional argument) – This defines what this function should return in the event that it does not find an exact match to the lookup_value. Col_index_num (required argument) – This is an integer, specifying the column number of the supplied table_array, that you want to return a value from. The VLOOKUP function searches in the left-most column of this array. Table_array (required argument) – The table array is the data array that is to be searched. Lookup_value (required argument) – Lookup_value specifies the value that we want to look up in the first column of a table. The VLOOKUP function uses the following arguments: To translate this to simple English, the formula is saying, “Look for this piece of information, in the following area, and give me some corresponding data from another column”. =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, ) Learn how to do this step by step in our Free Excel Crash Course! In simple terms, the VLOOKUP function says the following to Excel: “Look for this piece of information (e.g., bananas), in this data set (a table), and tell me some corresponding information about it (e.g., the price of bananas)”. The VLOOKUP Function in Excel is a tool for looking up a piece of information in a table or data set and extracting some corresponding data/information.
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