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No doubt you're sharp enough to have spotted the 0 as the exact, or fourth, parameter in the function in B21.Note that if your VLOOKUP function generates a #N/A error, it could be because you didn't use absolute references, and then copied and pasted the VLOOKUP formula from one cell to another This is an example of absolute references in action find out more about absolute references here. In case you're wondering, the $ signs in the function ($A$6:$C$10) mean that if you copy the formula in B21 to another location, it will continue to look in the product table. Having found it in the first column (column A) it then reads across to the third column (column C) and retrieves the value.In the table above, the VLOOKUP function looks for the value found in B20 (9823) in the first column of the range of cells from A6:C10 (i.e.You've been asked to come up with a way to check the price of a product when a product ID is typed into a given cell.Suppose you have a table that looks like the following: Here is an example of how the VLOOKUP() function is used to find a value based on an exact match. Examples of the VLOOKUP() function in action - VLOOKUP with an exact match If you set it to 0 (or leave it out), it will look for an exact match and return a #N/A error if it can't find an exact match. if you set the exact parameter to 1 the formula will look for the nearest value. In this function, exact is an optional value (that's why it's not shown in bold above). In some cases you want the VLOOKUP function to find the nearest match, and sometimes you'll want the exact match. Once the function finds the matching value in the lookup_table_range, it then reads across that row the table to the column you chose and returns the value it finds there. VLOOKUP() works by taking the value you are looking up ( lookup_value) and looking for it in the first column of the table you are searching in ( lo okup_table_range). =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_table_range, column, exact ) The VLOOKUP() function has the following syntax: Often, a long formula with lots of IF functions can be replaced by a single VLOOKUP formula. Formulas with multiple IF statements can get very complicated. The VLOOKUP function is particularly useful as an alternative to using multiple nested IF statements, particularly once you have more than two or three nested IF functions in your formula. Checking the date an employee started work, given the employee's staff ID number (look up the staff ID number and return their start date).Looking up the price of a product for a given sales quantity (look up the number of items being ordered and find the price to be charged for that volume).
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Looking up the price of a given product from a table of product information (look up the product name or part number and return the price for that product).
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Deciding which commission rate to pay based on the level of sales (look up the actual sales in a commission table to find the appropriate commission percentage to pay).Calculating the commission for a sales employee, given the value or quantity of sales they have made (look up the salesperson's name, find their sales, and multiply by the commission rate).VLOOKUP is useful for the following scenarios - no doubt you can think of examples of your own:
HOW TO USE VLOOKUP IN EXCEL DROP DOWN LIST HOW TO
It is only available to users of Office365 at the moment, but you can read our lesson on how to use XLOOKUP here. Note - Microsoft have announced a new function, XLOOKUP, which improves on VLOOKUP. We'll take you through several simple examples where you can see VLOOKUP in action. In this lesson you'll learn how to use VLOOKUP in your spreadsheets. You would lookup the the person's name in the Salesperson column, and then look in the Sales column to find that person's sales for the month. VLOOKUP is a powerful Excel function that allows you to look for a specified value in one column of data inside a table, and then fetch a value from another column in the same row.Īn example where VLOOKUP might be useful is if you have a monthly sales report in Excel, and want to find the sales made by a specific salesperson from within a monthly sales report.
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