With Excel 2007, Microsoft has introduced a powerful and useful feature called as Tables. One of the advantages of Tables is that you can write legible formulas by using structural references. That means, you can write easy to understand formulas like this,
But, there is a problem. When you write these formula and drag the formula cell sideways to fill remaining cells, Excel changes table column references and thus makes your formulas almost useless.
Well, there is a simple workaround for this problem.
Use copy & paste.
Instead of dragging the cell to fill formulas, you can use copy & paste to fill the formulas. In this case, Excel will preserve all table references while changing the cell references accordingly. See this demo to understand:
Share your Table Tips & Tricks
Ever since I discovered the tables feature in Excel 2007, I have been using them to save time and simplify my work with data. Tables have several useful features that make life simple for analysts and data junkies everywhere.
What about you? Do you use Excel Tables? What are your top table tricks? Please share using comments.
More on Excel Tables
If you are using Excel 2007 or above, I encourage you to learn Excel Tables. They will make your life simpler. Go thru below articles to learn more,
6 Responses to “Using Lookup Formulas with Excel Tables [Video]”
H1 !
this is my very first comment.
Can you use same technique with Excel 2003 lists ?
thanks 😀
Thanks, Chandoo! I like seeing the sneak peak of what's to come on Friday too 🙂
@Damian.. Welcome to chandoo.org. Thanks for the comments.
Yes, you can use the same with Excel 2003 lists too.
@Tom.. You have seen future and its awesome.. isnt it?
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[…] Using Tables – Video 1, Video 2 […]
Hi, is there a vlookup formula for the second example (IDlist)? I used a similar formula to look up the ID for the person, but the reverse way (look up the person with the ID) comes up N/A.