A telecom related example showing the use of VLOOKUP.

The 5th column above shows the Districts. There are several like Kadapa, Hyderabad, Kurnool, Vijaywada, etc. The 2nd column shows the sites that belong to different districts. The problem is that the sites are arranged in such a way that if viewed using the filter ALL the Districts will hence go in random order Now each District is handled by a different person, hence each person will compile his or her details onto his own copy of the excel sheet & forward it to the common person. The common person will then have to take all the details from all the people & copy paste them onto one final draft. The problem with copy pasting is that since the Serial numbers go hay via because of using the filter function for each District, hence copying an entire block will also copy the rows & columns in between the serial numbers & alphabets. Hence when we paste this onto a new document, we get all unwanted data as well. The difficult way is to copy row by row and then paste it row by row into the new document. This however is time consuming. The EASY Way is by Using VLOOKUP provided as a built in function in MS EXCEL. Firstly select the DISTRICT by using the FILTER in both the existing & new documents. To fill the contents of a particular column . Select the first cell of that column which is blank as shown..

Now type = in that cell ( dont press enter key after = ) At the top left hand corner near the spell check you will see different functions with a small pull down arrow. Here you can see VLOOKUP already highlighted. If it isnt select it from the drop down arrow.

Now click on the VLOOKUP and you will get this pop up

Place the cursor in the first field Lookup_value. This is where you select the column of site names whose values you require. After selecting the entire column, the Lookup_value field automatically gets updated as

Now place the cursor in the second field Table_array. Open the existing document (Alt tab) Here you need to select all the columns from the site column to the column whose values are to be copied. This is shown below.

We have selected columns from B all the way upto column T. The columns in the middle are also selected but Hidden. The VLOOKUP box now looks like this

Now place the cursor in the third field Col_index_num. Here you need to specify the column number whose values need to be copied. From the above selection from Column B to Column T, Column B = 1 C=2 D=3 .. T = 19. Since we want the values in column T to be copied we put value = 19

The fourth field Range_lookup should be 0 by default.

Then press OK

The new document now gets modified as follows. The selected cell now gets a value as shown.

Place the cursor in that cell again & copy the cell. Then press Shift and select all the cells in that same column till the bottom of the table/group.

Then press paste or ctrl+V. The values will be copied perfectly.

Now go to the filter of that column (0.6M) and select 0

You will get those cells with value 0. Select those cells & right click Clear Contents. Now go to the filter and View ALL This is done only if you do not want to show zeros in the table. It is preferred to just keep the table blank instead of adding zeros. The column of contents is now ready.