Here is a question someone asked me in a class recently.
I know how to use VLOOKUP to find a value based on search term. But I have a slight variation to it. I need to extract value below the cell VLOOKUP finds.
This is simpler than it sounds.
We can use INDEX + MATCH formulas to do this.
The syntax is like below:
=INDEX( value column, MATCH (search what, search column, 0) + 1 )
Why it works?
MATCH formula finds the position of what you are searching. By adding 1 to it and extracting the corresponding “values column”, we can get VLOOKUP + 1 value.
Homework for you
If you think finding VLOOKUP+1 is easy then I have a challenge for you.
Find the last match. Lets say in a table you have multiple items matching lookup value. How would you find the last item. Assume what you are finding is in A1, list is in C1:D20 and we want the value in 2nd column.
Go ahead and post your answers in comments section.














One Response to “How to compare two Excel sheets using VLOOKUP? [FREE Template]”
Maybe I missed it, but this method doesn't include data from James that isn't contained in Sara's data.
I added a new sheet, and named the ranges for Sara and James.
Maybe something like:
B2: =SORT(UNIQUE(VSTACK(SaraCust, JamesCust)))
C2: =XLOOKUP(B2#,SaraCust,SaraPaid,"Missing")
D2: =XLOOKUP(B2#,JamesCust, JamesPaid,"Missing")
E2: =IF(ISERROR(C2#+D2#),"Missing",IF(C2#=D2#,"Yes","No"))
Then we can still do similar conditional formatting. But this will pull in data missing from Sara's sheet as well.