How to do a Vlookup in Excel 2013

Vlookups (vertical lookups) are so useful. There are also less common Hlookups (horizontal lookups).  These are less common since most data is organized vertically – not horizontally but they work the same way.

This example will apply to all versions of Excel back to 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013.  I will use screenshots from Excel 2013.

Vlookups in a nut shell -allow you to match up data in 2 different locations. Could be 2 files or 2 sheets.

Here’s what you need:

• 2 separate sets of data you want to combine.
• a common field between the 2 data sets.

For this example – we will use data where we have one sheet of department information and department codes and another data set with employee information.  The employee information also has department codes  – this will be the common field. We need some of the other department information in the department list – to be added to the employee list.

Here are the 2 sheets.

Use these steps.

1. The first vlookup function will be in cell c2. So we will start by clicking in that cell.
2. On the formula bar – click the Insert Function button.
   
3. In the dialog box – type in “vlookup” and click Go to search for the function.
   
4. When the function is listed in the box – select it and click OK.
   
5. This dialog box will represents the arguments (parts) of the function. Notice 3 of them are bold and one is not. The bold indicates required fields.
   
   Lookup_value – is the cell in the current data (the department in the employee list) that matches a cell in the data you are looking up.
   Table_array – this is the range of the 2nd data set – in this case it is the department list. This range should be marked absolute with $ signs as indicated in the screenshot.
   Col_index_num – this is the number as you count across in the table that you want for the data. In this case – it is the Dept Code field which is “2”.
   Range_lookup – this is a true or false value – if you want an exact match – it is false – if you want the closest – it is true. Most often, it is False.
6. Once you have filled it out – it will look like this for this example.
   
7. Once you have clicked OK, the result of the formula will show up in the cell.
   
8. Then you will copy the formula down by double-clicking on the handle of the cell.
   
   
9. The final result will look like this.