In the first example below, we are telling Excel to look for a match to whatever is in cell A2. But usually this will be a reference to another cell. You could enter text (by enclosing it in quotation marks) or a number. Lookup Value вЂ“ This is what you want Excel to look for.When if finds a match, it will move over to the column you choose and use whatever it finds there as the answer to your formula. It means Excel will search a column looking for a match of the data you specify. Here is what each part of the formula represents: You can type your vlookup formula in from scratch or use the function wizard button on the formula bar to guide you through it. But the formula still works the same way. In a real life situation the price list would more likely be in a different workbook or at least on a different tab in the same workbook. The spreadsheet below has sales information in columns A вЂ“ D and the price list is in columns F and G. LetвЂ™s look at a simple example of how this works. While I couldnвЂ™t do anything about having to enter the quantities, I was able to save them a lot of time and reduce opportunity for errors by using ExcelвЂ™s VLOOKUP function to automatically bring in the correct price from their pricing spreadsheet. Naturally, they wanted a better way to complete this task. It involved hand entering quantities on a spreadsheet, then looking up a unit price on another spreadsheet and entering it in the next column. A client once told me about a process that consumed several hours of their week.

Using excel for accounting