Learning Excel: VLOOKUP

Looking up in a column

Kyle knows the customer codes by heart, but not where everyone is. "K03, where was that again?" The customer list is on the right of the sheet. VLOOKUP searches it for you.

VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP looks for a value in the first column of a table and gives what is next to it. You give it four things: what you're looking for, the table, the number of the column you want back, and FALSE for an exact match.

In G2, =VLOOKUP(B2,L2:M6,2,FALSE) looks for the code K03 in L2:L6 and gives the area from the second column of the table: Manchester.

=VLOOKUP(B2,L2:M6,2,FALSE)

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	K	L	M	N	P	Q
1	Ride	Customer	Zone	Km	Weight	Price	Area	Surcharge	Customer name	Name	Code	Area		From km	Price
2	R01	K03	Centre	2.5	3		Manchester			Bloom Bakery	K01	Manchester		0	£6.00
3	R02	K01	Suburbs	7.2	12					Book Nook	K02	Burnage		3	£9.00
4	R03	K05	Docks	11.4	25					Cygnet Café	K03	Manchester		6	£12.00
5	R04	K02	Centre	1.8	1					Dot Print	K04	Didsbury		10	£18.00
6	R05	K03	Suburbs	5.5	8					Fork & Spoke	K05	Withington
7	R06	K04	Docks	9.9	18
8	R07	K01	Centre	3	4
9	R08	K02	Suburbs	6	10					Zone	Centre	Suburbs	Docks
10	R09	K05	Docks	14	30					Surcharge	£0.00	£2.00	£5.00
11	R10	K06	Centre	4.2	2
12
13									Position	Weight	Centre	Suburbs	Docks	Class	Medium
14										Light	£0.00	£1.00	£3.00	Zone	Docks
15										Medium	£2.00	£3.00	£5.00	Result
16										Heavy	£4.00	£6.00	£8.00
17

Try it yourself

Which area is the customer of ride R02 in? Look it up in G3.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	K	L	M	N	P	Q
1	Ride	Customer	Zone	Km	Weight	Price	Area	Surcharge	Customer name	Name	Code	Area		From km	Price
2	R01	K03	Centre	2.5	3					Bloom Bakery	K01	Manchester		0	£6.00
3	R02	K01	Suburbs	7.2	12					Book Nook	K02	Burnage		3	£9.00
4	R03	K05	Docks	11.4	25					Cygnet Café	K03	Manchester		6	£12.00
5	R04	K02	Centre	1.8	1					Dot Print	K04	Didsbury		10	£18.00
6	R05	K03	Suburbs	5.5	8					Fork & Spoke	K05	Withington
7	R06	K04	Docks	9.9	18
8	R07	K01	Centre	3	4
9	R08	K02	Suburbs	6	10					Zone	Centre	Suburbs	Docks
10	R09	K05	Docks	14	30					Surcharge	£0.00	£2.00	£5.00
11	R10	K06	Centre	4.2	2
12
13									Position	Weight	Centre	Suburbs	Docks	Class	Medium
14										Light	£0.00	£1.00	£3.00	Zone	Docks
15										Medium	£2.00	£3.00	£5.00	Result
16										Heavy	£4.00	£6.00	£8.00
17

My Excel writes

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