Reader small image

You're reading from  Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures

Product typeBook
Published inSep 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803243948
Edition1st Edition
Tools
Right arrow
Author (1)
David Ringstrom
David Ringstrom
author image
David Ringstrom

David Ringstrom exclaimed “Well, this is a stupid program, you can’t do anything with it” the first time that he launched Lotus 1-2-3 in 1987, unaware that pressing the slash key displayed the menu. That moment sealed his fate as he is now a nationally recognized spreadsheet expert. In 1991, David started a spreadsheet consulting practice that he still runs today. David has taught over 2,000 webinars and published hundreds of articles, all on Excel, and he imparts spreadsheet skills to thousands of college students each year. He is the author or coauthor of five books and the technical editor of over 40 books. He is a certified public accountant and a graduate of Georgia State University and has served in the United States Navy.
Read more about David Ringstrom

Right arrow

The VLOOKUP function

Lookup functions in Excel enable you to retrieve data from a list. The =VLOOKUP(G3,B3:E12,3,FALSE) formula in cell H3 of the VLOOKUP and IFNA worksheet of this chapter’s example workbook returns 94 as the length of Ninety Mile Beach in miles, as shown in Figure 10.1. Later in this section, I’ll discuss why VLOOKUP only returns a single match:

Figure 10.1 – The VLOOKUP and IFNA functions

VLOOKUP has four arguments:

  • Lookup_value – This is the value that you’re searching for within a list, which, in this case, is G3. VLOOKUP looks down the first column of the table array for this value.
  • Table_array – This refers to the cell coordinates of the list that you wish to search; in this case, they are B3:E12.
  • Col_index_num – This is the column position within table_array that you wish to return data from; in this case, 3 represents the third column so that we can look up the length...
lock icon
The rest of the page is locked
Previous PageNext Page
You have been reading a chapter from
Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures
Published in: Sep 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803243948

Author (1)

author image
David Ringstrom

David Ringstrom exclaimed “Well, this is a stupid program, you can’t do anything with it” the first time that he launched Lotus 1-2-3 in 1987, unaware that pressing the slash key displayed the menu. That moment sealed his fate as he is now a nationally recognized spreadsheet expert. In 1991, David started a spreadsheet consulting practice that he still runs today. David has taught over 2,000 webinars and published hundreds of articles, all on Excel, and he imparts spreadsheet skills to thousands of college students each year. He is the author or coauthor of five books and the technical editor of over 40 books. He is a certified public accountant and a graduate of Georgia State University and has served in the United States Navy.
Read more about David Ringstrom