

How to use VLOOKUP in Excel Step 1: Organize the data FALSE – Exact match, that is, if an exact match not found, then it will return an error.TRUE – Approximate match, that is, if an exact match is not found, use the closest match below the lookup_value.The argument can be set to TRUE or FALSE, which means: Range_lookup (optional argument) – This defines what this function should return in the event that it does not find an exact match to the lookup_value.Col_index_num (required argument) – This is an integer, specifying the column number of the supplied table_array, that you want to return a value from.The VLOOKUP function searches in the left-most column of this array. Table_array (required argument) – The table array is the data array that is to be searched.Lookup_value (required argument) – Lookup_value specifies the value that we want to look up in the first column of a table.The VLOOKUP function uses the following arguments: To translate this to simple English, the formula is saying, “Look for this piece of information, in the following area, and give me some corresponding data from another column”. =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, ) Learn how to do this step by step in our Free Excel Crash Course! In simple terms, the VLOOKUP function says the following to Excel: “Look for this piece of information (e.g., bananas), in this data set (a table), and tell me some corresponding information about it (e.g., the price of bananas)”. The VLOOKUP Function in Excel is a tool for looking up a piece of information in a table or data set and extracting some corresponding data/information.
