Excel
How to Use VLOOKUP in Excel
VLOOKUP is one of the most popular functions in Excel. It stands for Vertical Lookup. You can use it to search for a value in the first column of a table and return a value in the same row from a specified column.
Syntax
The basic syntax for VLOOKUP
=VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_lookup])
Example Data
Consider the following sales data:
| Product ID | Product Name | Price | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| P001 | Laptop | $999 | Electronics |
| P002 | Office Chair | $199 | Furniture |
| P003 | Coffee Maker | $49 | Appliances |
| P004 | Monitor | $299 | Electronics |
How it works
If we want to find the price of "Office Chair" (P002), we can use the following formula:
Looking up Price by Product ID
=VLOOKUP("P002", A2:D5, 3, FALSE)
This formula searches for "P002" in the first column of the range A2:D5, and returns the value from the 3rd column (Price).