Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for some magic! [VLOOKUP Week]

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
This article is part of our VLOOKUP Week. Read more.

Situation

Sometimes we don’t know what we want. If this happens when I am in a bar, I usually order a cocktail. Just a mix of everything. The same will work in Excel too.

For eg. If you have lots of data, but the value you want to look up needs to change based on whims and fancies of your users, then you can resort to a cocktail. A mix of VLOOKUP with Drop down lists (Data validation)

Data:

Data for this Example -Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for Some Magic

Solution

The recipe for VLOOKUP cocktail is relatively simple. We just take the list of sales person names and use it as a source for our input cell’s data validation drop down list. Rest is left to your imagination. Here is an example in action.

Examples:

Data for this Example -Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for Some Magic

Sample File

Download Example File – Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for Some Magic

Similar Tips

VLOOKUP Week @ Chandoo.org - Learn tips on lookup formulas in Excel

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”

  1. Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel) says:

    Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...

    If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
    ' Do something
    End If

    • Fares Al-Dhabbi says:

      That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely

      Thanks!

  2. Tim says:

    In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use

    If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
    'do something
    End If

    as well.

  3. Luke M says:

    Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.

  4. Cyril Z. says:

    Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).

    Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).

    My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.

    By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂

  5. Bhavik says:

    This is nice article.
    I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
    Hope the examples below help.

    Public Sub CaseSensitive2()

    If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub

    Public Sub CaseSensitive()

    If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub
    Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
    'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
    If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub

Leave a Reply