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#HOW TO USE VLOOKUP IN EXCEL 2016 ACROSS TWO WORKBOOKS HOW TO#

Although, I still think INDEX-MATCH is better in most cases.

Slower (at least in newer versions of Excel like 2013) – opposed to the broadly shared myth INDEX MATCH is no longer faster than a simple VLOOKUP.

Harder to use – VLOOKUP is a little easier to understand than INDEX-MATCH and I know some people have difficulty with this two step approach.

Both vertical and horizontal lookups – VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP address either only vertial or horizontal lookups, whereas with the INDEX MATCH you can easily do both.

Less error prone – adding/removing columns/rows from the lookup table should not crash the INDEX-MATCH combo.

More flexible – allows you to match both against rows and columns.

Let’s compare the pro’s and con’s of using INDEX MATCH (instead of VLOOKUP): In fact MOST Google results for VLOOKUP vs INDEX MATCH won’t mention the significant advantage VLOOKUP has over INDEX MATCH which I hinted in the previous section. INDEX MATCH, better than using a regular VLOOKUP. If you’ve been using VLOOKUP long enough you probably stumbled across MANY articles/posts on why many consider a certain combination of two Excel functions i.e. See below:Īre 2 DOUBLE TRUE VLOOKUPs really worth the trouble? If you are looking for performance than YES! Read more here. If so the second VLOOKUP will return the corresponding result. See what happens here? The first VLOOKUP validates whether there is an EXACT MATCH in the first column. "" if not found (replace "" with #N/A if needed) =IF(VLOOKUP("Monkey" A1:B5 1 TRUE)="Monkey" VLOOKUP("Monkey" A1:B5 2 TRUE) ) why not use a second VLOOKUP for that? Consider the DOUBLE VLOOKUP below: Well that’s not very appropriate huh? How can we know for sure if the TRUE VLOOKUP cross-referenced the Animal correctly? Well. Great! But what happens if we use a simple TRUE VLOOKUP?: If we use a standard FALSE VLOOKUP like this:

We want to match the Animal Monkey against a Category. To exemplify the DOUBLE TRUE VLOOKUP let’s consider this table: Luckily Excel experts have found a way around this with a DOUBLE TRUE VLOOKUP. Important! If you got hooked up already on the performance bit of the TRUE VLOOKUP beware! The TRUE VLOOKUP will always return a result… even if it didn’t find an exact match. The TRUE (approximated match) VLOOKUP is significantly faster than the FALSE (exact match) VLOOKUP. So what’s the difference you will ask? PERFORMANCE. This example will equally work with range_lookup equal to TRUE as long as we sort our FIRST COLUMN alphabetically (or numerically in other cases)!

In the previous example the range_lookup parameter was set to FALSE. This means that the VLOOKUP function will always look for an EXACT MATCH. Notice that I am using the range_lookup set to FALSE. Nothing beats a hands-on VLOOKUP example! See the below animation to witness for yourself how VLOOKUP works! This parameter works correctly ONLY IF THE FIRST COLUMN OF THE table_array IS SORTED! assume the FIRST COLUMN in table_array is sorted either numerically or alphabetically and return an APPROXIMATE MATCH. FALSE – search for the first EXACT MATCH in the first column of the table_array.The first left-most column in the table_array starts numbering with 1Īn OPTIONAL boolean (True/False) parameter that defines how the VLOOKUP function will behave: Search and return corresponding value in column col_index_num of the table_arrayĬolumn number within the table_array that contains return values.Search FIRST column to find the ROW containing the lookup_value.Must be in the first column of the range of cells you specify in table-array Let’s look at the arguments of VLOOKUP in more detail: Parameter

#HOW TO USE VLOOKUP IN EXCEL 2016 ACROSS TWO WORKBOOKS HOW TO#

How to use VLOOKUP?Ĭonsidering the above VLOOKUP example let’s take a closer look at the parameters of the VLOOKUP function: Let us move on to learn how to use VLOOKUP. restaurant menu (looking up the dish price), grocery lists (how many bottles of milk did I need to buy?) etc. In a phonebook analogy you would be looking-up a person’s phonenumber by his name and surnameĮveryday we deal with similar lookup problems e.g. VLOOKUP returns a cell located at a row corresponding to your lookup value.