Situation
So far we have seen what VLOOKUP formula is and how to put it to some nifty uses. Today, we will go one step further and learn how to do 2 Way Lookups.
What is a 2 Way Lookup?
Lookup is when you find a value in one column and get the corresponding element from other columns. 2 Way Lookup is when you lookup value at the intersection corresponding to a given row & column values.
For example, assuming you have data like below, and you want to findout how much sales Joseph made in month of March, you are essentially doing a 2 way lookup.
Data:
Solution
While the problem may seem complicated, the solutions to two way lookups are surprisingly simple. In this post, I will review 4 different ways to write 2 way lookup formulas.
Keep this in mind:
- I use various named ranges in the below examples.
valSalesPersonandvalMonthrefer to the name of sales person & month we are looking for.lstSalesPersonandlstMonthrefer to the list of sales persons (first column) and list of months (first row).tblDatahas the sales figures for everyone.
Technique 1 – Using INDEX & MATCH Formulas
If you know the row number and column number in a given table, you can use INDEX formula to get the element at the intersection. And we can use MATCH formula to find the position of an value in a list. Combining both,
=INDEX(tblData,MATCH(valSalesPerson,lstSalesPerson,0),MATCH(valMonth,lstMonth,0)) is the formula we use to get the sales amount of valSalesPerson for valMonth.
Technique 2 – Using Named Ranges & Intersection (SPACE) Operator
Do you know that you can write =range1 range2 to get the value(s) at the intersection of range1 & range2? That is right, excel has an intersection operator. I will write more about this some other time. In the meanwhile, watch this short video to understand how you can use named ranges & intersection operator to perform 2 way lookups.
However, you need to create named ranges for your data all the time. A simpler alternative is to use Excel 2007 Tables feature so the names are created for you automatically.
Technique 3 – Using SUMPRODUCT Formula
This is an absolute beauty. Thanks to Vipul for teaching me this superb trick.
You can use SUMPRODUCT to get the value at intersection like this: =SUMPRODUCT((lstSalesPerson=valSalesPerson)*(lstMonth=valMonth),tblData)
How does it work? Simple, When you write (lstSalesPerson=valSalesPerson)*(lstMonth=valMonth), SUMPRODUCT generates a lot of zeros and a one at the intersection. When you use tblData as second argument, the result is value at intersection.
Technique 4 – Using VLOOKUP with MATCH Formula
A much simpler and easy to remember alternative. You can simply write =VLOOKUP(valSalesPerson,$B$5:$N$17,MATCH(valMonth,lstMonth,0)+1,FALSE) to fetch the value for a corresponding month.
Review of 2 Way Lookup Techniques
Sample File
Download Example File – 2 Way Lookup Formulas in Excel
Go ahead and download the above file. It contains all the examples. Play with them to learn the 2 way lookup formulas better.
PS: Also download this beautiful example file that Matias has kindly shared with me. It shows how to use INDIRECT formula along with Excel Tables to do 2way lookups.
Special Thanks to
Vipul, Spotpuff, judgepax, Bryan for the tip. (Click on the name to see their tip)
Similar Tips
- Excel SUMPRODUCT Formula – What is it, how to use it & examples
- How to Lookup Values to the Left – Using INDEX + MATCH Formulas
- Range lookup – finding the corresponding range for a value
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.