VLOOKUP Awesome Quick: From Your First VLOOKUP to Becoming a VLOOKUP Guru
By Bill Jelen
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VLOOKUP Awesome Quick - Bill Jelen
VLOOKUP: Awesome Quick
From Your First Excel VLOOKUP
to Becoming a VLOOKUP Guru
by
Bill Jelen
Holy Macro! Books
PO Box 82, Uniontown OH 44685
VLOOKUP Awesome Quick
© 2012 by Bill Jelen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information or storage retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.
All terms known in this book known to be trademarks have been appropriately capitalized. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are not affiliated with Holy Macro! Books
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information is provided on an as is
basis. The authors and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book.
Release Date: November 2011
Author: Bill Jelen
Copy Editor: Tyler Nash
Cover Design: Shannon Mattiza, 6Ft4 Productions
Published by: Holy Macro! Books, PO Box 82, Uniontown OH 44685
Layout and ePub Formatting by: MrExcelLabs.com
Distributed by Independent Publishers Group
ISBN 978-1-61547-409-7 ePub
Dedication
Dedicated to Gary Kern and Khalil Matta. I probably mastered VLOOKUP when working on that wild graduate research study at Notre Dame.
Introduction
VLOOKUP is the most important function in all of Excel. Yes, more people use SUM, AVERAGE, IF, but the power is in VLOOKUP. I used to be a manager who hired financial analysists, and when Human Resources would call to ask me what I wanted on the job posting form, I would say that I was looking for someone who could do VLOOKUP in their sleep. Once they had mastered VLOOKUP, everything else was a piece of cake.
For me, the world shakes out into two kinds of people. Group A are those who can do VLOOKUP. Group B is everyone else. By reading the first chapter of this book, I will ensure that you are in Group A.
If you do VLOOKUPs all the time, they are easy.
If you’ve only heard about VLOOKUP from a college professor, then you are probably under the spell of a number of VLOOKUP myths. If you’ve only heard about VLOOKUP from someone who only heard about VLOOKUP from their college professor, then you are definitely under the spell of a number of VLOOKUP myths.
When I do my Power Excel seminars, I wander around the audience before the seminar asking people what they would like to see covered today. The two most common answers are Pivot Table and VLOOKUP. People whisper, Can you just explain to me in plain English how to do a VLOOKUP?
That is what this book will do, and it will do it quickly. I will bust through the myths and show you how to knock out a VLOOKUP in a few seconds. Then, I will tell you what can go wrong, how to spot those problems, and how to correct them.
This video will get you started, explaining a VLOOKUP in plain English:
Video: Explain VLOOKUP in English
Beyond the first two chapters, things will get interesting. I will show you how to use VLOOKUP to make your job easier. I will answer a whole bunch of bizarre VLOOKUP questions such as how to find the last match, and so on. I will also teach you about an interesting alternative to VLOOKUP using INDEX and MATCH. Remember above where I said there are two kinds of people? Every once in a while, I will run into someone who has moved beyond VLOOKUP and uses only INDEX and MATCH. It doesn’t happen often, but when I meet someone in that camp, the Group AA, I am always impressed.
The files used in the production of this book are available for download at http://www.mrexcel.com/VLAQfiles.html.
Chapter 1 - The Basics
Use VLOOKUP to Join Two Tables
Your I.T. department gave you a data set with Item Number, Date, and Quantity sold. They didn’t put an item description in there. If you call back and ask them to re-do the file, it will take three weeks.
Figure 1 You need to add item description here.
You look around on your computer and you find a second table that maps item number to item description. It is fine that the lookup table contains extra columns, such as Price in the figure below. It is important that the lookup value is to the left of the value that you are trying to return. In the figure below, SKU in column F is located left of Description in column H, so the table will work.
For now, copy this table out to the right of your data set. You should leave at least one blank column between the original data set and the lookup table.
Figure 2 You have a table with the description for each item.
VLOOKUP will solve this problem easily. This is the classic use for VLOOKUP. This is the single most important function in Excel. VLOOKUP will save you time and time again.
To do a VLOOKUP, you specify a lookup value such as cell A2. You also specify a lookup table such as F2:H30.
The lookup table must have the value you are trying to lookup