what is vlookup in excel

what is vlookup in excel

VLOOKUP is a powerful function in Excel that allows you to search for a specific value in a table and retrieve a corresponding value from a different column in the same row. The V in VLOOKUP stands for "vertical", which means that the function looks for a value in the leftmost column of the table and returns a value from a column to the right.

The syntax of the VLOOKUP function is as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_lookup])

Here's a breakdown of each argument:

• lookup_value: This is the value that you want to find in the leftmost column of the table.

• table_array: This is the range of cells that contains the table that you want to search.

• col_index_num: This is the number of the column in the table that contains the value that you want to retrieve. The leftmost column is 1, the second column is 2, and so on.

• range_lookup: This is an optional argument that specifies whether you want an exact match or an approximate match. If you enter TRUE or omit this argument, Excel will perform an approximate match and return the closest match to the lookup value. If you enter FALSE, Excel will perform an exact match and return only an exact match.

To illustrate how the VLOOKUP function works, let's say you have a table of employee names and salaries, and you want to find the salary for a specific employee. The table might look like this:

To find the salary for Jane Doe, you would use the following formula:

=VLOOKUP("Jane Doe", A2:B4, 2, FALSE)

In this example, "Jane Doe" is the lookup value, A2:B4 is the table array, 2 is the column index number for the salary column, and FALSE specifies an exact match.

The VLOOKUP function can be very useful in a wide range of scenarios, such as looking up prices for products in a price list, finding sales data for a specific region, or retrieving customer information from a database. However, it's important to remember that the VLOOKUP function has some limitations, such as the fact that it only works with vertical tables and can only retrieve values from columns to the right of the lookup column. In some cases, you may need to use alternative functions or methods to achieve the desired result.

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