Situation
VLOOKUP is great for extracting information from a huge data table based on what you are looking for. But what if you need to extract more than one column of information? For eg. Lets say you have salesperson’s name in left most column, and monthly sales figures in next columns, one for each month. Now, you want to find the total sales made by a given sales person. How do you go about it?
Data:
![Data for this Example -Get Multiple Outputs [VLOOKUP Quick Tip]](http://chandoo.org/img/f/vw/vloookup-from-multiple-columns-data.png)
Solution
Simple. You can use an array in the column number field of VLOOKUP. So for eg. =SUM(VLOOKUP(value, list, {2,3,4},false)) will give you sum of values in columns 2,3 and 4. Of course you must press CTRL+SHIFT+Enter after typing the formula. See few more examples:
Examples:
![Data for this Example -Get Multiple Outputs [VLOOKUP Quick Tip]](http://chandoo.org/img/f/vw/vlookup-multi-column-examples.png)
Sample File
Download Example File – Get Multiple Outputs [VLOOKUP Quick Tip]
Special Thanks to
John for the tip. (Click on the name to see tip)
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3 Responses to “Top 5 Excel Skills you need to be a Successful Data Analyst in 2023 (podcast)”
Thanks Chandoo, some great helpful tips here. I'm quite good at Excel (mainly thanks to you!) but I'm always learning. I love the link you gave above to Dynamic Arrays & Spill Ranges, I understand them a bit more now, and can see some uses for them.
I am glad you enjoyed the show Dermot.
Great to see you back! Enjoyed when you first started the podcast and super excited to start listening to you again!