But if you only do that once a year, you’ll probably have to research how to use the VLOOKUP function in Excel. For the third most used function in Excel (after SUM and AVERAGE), VLOOKUP is complex.

Don’t worry, though — this function isn’t nearly as intimidating as it looks, and it can save a lot of time and allow for more freestyle analysis. Here's how to use VLOOKUP in Excel.

When you use VLOOKUP in Excel, you might encounter several common issues that can prevent the function from returning the correct results. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and ...

In the Function Arguments dialog box, type the cell you want to change in the Lookup_ Value text box. In the Table_ Array text box, we type B8:D9; because this is the Range of cells we are looking at.

We’ll combine a combo box and the VLOOKUP () function. Looking at the actual data, you might expect B to return Beverages because that value occurs before Baked Goods & Mixes in the category column.

How to use the VLOOKUP function in Microsoft Excel to find related data points in your worksheet Written by Meira Gebel Updated Oct 13, 2020, 2:07 PM PT ...

Much like other functions, however, the trick to using VLOOKUP effectively is knowing what commands and values to use in what order. Again, much like programming languages.

Vlookup used to create an array in memory that held the full range of the table. So the smaller you can make the array, the less memory the function will use.