VLOOKUP
What it's for
VLOOKUP is one of the most common formulas in Excel, and one of the first real formulas most people learn. Its job is simple to describe even if the formula itself looks intimidating: it looks for something in one place, and brings back information that's sitting next to it. Picture two lists — one of employee ID numbers next to names, another of ID numbers next to departments. VLOOKUP matches one to the other automatically, instead of you scrolling through by hand.
When you'd use it
You'll usually reach for VLOOKUP when you have two related tables and need to pull information from one into the other — connecting a product ID to its price, an order number to a customer's shipping address, or a student ID to their grade. VLOOKUP replaces that manual lookup.
How it works
VLOOKUP asks four questions, in this order: (1) What am I looking for? Usually a cell reference like a name or ID sitting in the row you're working on. (2) Where should I look? The range VLOOKUP searches through — the value you're searching for needs to be in the first column of this range. (3) Once I find a match, which column do I pull the answer from? A number, counted from the left edge of the range. (4) Do I need an exact match, or is a close one okay? This is TRUE or FALSE — almost every time you'll want FALSE, meaning "only give me an exact match, don't guess."
A worked example
=VLOOKUP("E1042", A2:B500, 2, FALSE)This tells Excel: search for E1042 in column A of this range, and when you find it, give me whatever's in column B on that same row.
A tip worth knowing
VLOOKUP can only search to its right — the column you're pulling the answer from has to come after the column you're searching in. If your data is set up the other way around, INDEX/MATCH or XLOOKUP will handle it without needing to rearrange your columns.
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