As the gentleman at immigration counter stamped my passport & said, “Welcome to Australia”, I could barely contain my excitement. You see, Australia has been on my list of places to visit as far back as I can remember. It finally happened on On Sunday, 29th of April 2012.
After collecting my baggage, I walked out of Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport. My friend Danielle (from Plum Solutions) is waiting for me there. Thus began my Australian adventure and it was fantastic. (Aussies so fondly use this word).
Grab a fine cup of coffee, sit back and read to know how the whole experience went.
Back story: How the opportunity came
I am not sure how the fascination with Australia began. But as I grew up the desire to visit land down under grew up too. So much that during my MBA placement season, I even applied for Macquarie Bank to work as an analyst in Sydney. Despite not knowing how to balance a balance sheet. It was a good thing they did not hire me, or else I would have been blamed for the global financial mess.
When I quit my job to work on Chandoo.org full time, I pushed the Australian trip further in to future, as I wanted to focus on running business.
Almost one year ago, on 30th June, a brilliant idea crossed my mind, “why not conduct a set of classes in Australia. That would give me an excuse to visit the place while not paying for the trip out of my pocket.”
Danielle’s name immediate came to my mind. So I emailed her “Excel workshops in Australia …?” and we got talking.
In March this year I have applied for Australian Visa & announced about the session on Chandoo.org. We got tremendous response for the session with many early sing-ups.
Initially I have planned to travel with Jo & kids. But after discussing about it, we realized that it may not be a good idea to travel with kids given that I would have to visit a new city every week to conduct the trainings. So I left for Australia alone with mixed feelings. Sad to leave kids & Jo behind, excited to visit it finally.
Response for our Excel & Dashboards Masterclasses
We conducted 4 Masterclasses – 1 each in Sydney & Brisbane and 2 in Melbourne. A total of 64 people attended the sessions. We also conducted 3 masterclasses for KPMG for their offices in Sydney, Perth & Melbourne. Around 30 people from financial modeling, risk management, auditing teams of KPMG attended these. And we did a 1 day training program (shorter version of masterclass) for SEEK.COM.AU in their Melbourne office.
I received very positive & happy feedback from delegates everywhere. This shows the generosity of Aussies. I felt fortunate to have eager, enthusiastic & excellent participants for all the classes. Few testimonials from the attendees,
Chandoo’s personality makes learning advanced excel techniques actually _fun_. I think that says a lot. You don’t often say to yourself “Wow, I had fun playing with Excel today!”, do you?
– Tom Hubbard, Manufacturing (Sydney)
Great useful content focused on real world examples. Emphasis on planning aswell as actual excel examples which means content can be applied to any dashboards e.g. BI or other software.
… very knowledgeable both about excel and business scenarios. Clear simple instructions with excellent knowledge across all versions of excel.
– Sinead Starrs, Marketing (Sydney)
chandoo is like a ‘drug’, that keep you want to get even more for excel 🙂 no wonder why he’s a CEO for this. I think from professional point of view .. Chandoo is helping us to get into the skill sets where the reporting level should be more straight forward, lively, and help the decision maker to make a good decision. I strongly recommend this training for any excel savvy just to enhance knowledge and found a ‘new love’ to excel.
– Chandra Jong, Financial Services (Sydney)
Chandoo was fantastic. He was very easy to understand and made everyone feel comfortable to any raise questions. Chandoo’s knowledge about Excel is unbelievable – I wish I had his brain! I would recommend this course to everyone who works with Excel to prepare data/reports. Excel is forever changing and unless you keep up to date it’s hard to know about new techniques. Chandoo also gave some useful tips on keeping our Excel knowledge up to date. I was never a big fan of Excel but after this course I absolutely love it!! It’s amazing what we can use Excel for.
– Anonymous, Mining (Brisbane)
Presenter very knowledgeable and ran through alot of topics. I have been on other excel courses, and they always teach to the lowest common denominator. This was very fast paced, so I was never bored.
– Anonymous, Telecommunications (Brisbane)
Business-oriented. In our country, there are many PC schools, but the instructor has little business backgrounds and presentation skill.
– Anonymous, Teaching (Melbourne) – Flew from Japan to attend this.
Just wanted to say thank you for the fantastic course you conducted at KPMG in Melbourne. Some of the ideas you presented were fantastic and I will definitely incorporate them into client work in the future.
The course exceeded my expectations. The method and format you presented the course in was absolutely brilliant. I especially loved the help function you created by using a SHOW/HIDE macro on text-boxes and bubble-boxes. So simple but so powerful! I hope we can get you back out here again and teach us some more cool tricks and ideas that will impress our clients!
– Adam, Consulting (Melbourne)
I have managed to collect few video testimonials too. I will share them some other time.
I was a little worried before starting my first class, mainly because,
- I never charged $1000 per class, so I am not sure if the participants would be happy with what they get.
- Most of them had very high expectations as they have been reading Chandoo.org for a while and wanted to learn even more.
But I felt happy knowing that majority liked the course and immensely benefited from it.
What I learned by conducting the classes
Many things. Training 100 people from different industries, experience levels & skills in a short span of 6 weeks proved to be both a challenge & an excellent opportunity. The best things I learned are,
- Slow down during my explanations: Because we had a steep task of designing powerful dashboards in 2 days, I had to rush thru some concepts like INDEX+MATCH combination, SUMIFS, Conditional formats etc. While this worked well for many, there are a few people in each class who felt lost. I modified my style and pace for each session to make sure delegates get the best out of it. Next time when we plan a public training, I will make sure we cover fewer topics so that everyone can enjoy it.
- Most of my explanations work alright: Since I do very few live classes every year, this trip gave me confidence as almost every one told me they liked the explanations & examples.
- Add some printable material to the course: Quite a few people asked for print outs to take back home. I will be including several documents & detailed tutorials in my next courses so that delegates can carry the instructions back.
I have also learned various simple things & tips during this trip. I will be implementing them to make my future training programs even more awesome.
About Australia
Now what do I say. It certainly was worth the wait.
In Sydney, I loved the long walks on harbor bridge, excellent food & coffee near rocks, flowers & greenery in Royal botanical gardens, the magic of opera house, the bustling shops & arcades at Pitt & Hay streets. I loved the warm, smiling people. Everyone I met welcomed me to Sydney.
In Perth, I loved meeting Hui after all the time, loved their family (Eva, Lovely, Jhuvy & Leonard), enjoyed the majestic views from kings park, liked running next to Swan river, savored delicious fish & chips at Fremantle beach cafes. Perth was sunny & blue all the while I was there.
In Brisbane, I loved meeting Kurt (from Plum Solutions), enjoyed excellent food & coffee, Sprawling views from Roma street gardens, bustling shopping malls in down town, walking besides Brisbane river. It was a pity that I stayed only 2 days in Brisbane.
In Melbourne, I loved the vibrant culture, the criss-crossing trams, amazing national gallery of Victoria, walking on Bourke & Swanston streets amidst a sea of humanity, having coffee at Federation square. I spent a whole day exploring MCG, Rod Laver arena. I learned the rules of Australian Rules Football. Even though it rained, remained cold, Melbourne felt like a lovely place all along.
I felt bad not bringing Jo & kids to enjoy all this. But I know for sure that I will be in Australia next year. And we will fly together.
Thank you
I could not have done any of this on my own. Many thanks to,
- Danielle for planning these masterclasses & relentlessly pushing it so that I could fly there.
- Kurt & Susan from Plum Solutions who helped me conduct the classes
- Hui & family for showing me good time while I am in Perth
- KPMG & SEEK for having me at their offices so that I could share some of my knowledge with their teams.
- All the 64 (+1 who paid, but missed) delegates who attended my Masterclass and took time to learn. You are fabulous.
- Special thanks to people who flew in from different places to attend – from Hobart, from Adelaide, from Canberra, from Tokyo – Your eagerness to learn makes you awesome.
- Hugs & lots of love to all the people who spared an evening to have drinks with me in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne.
- Special thanks to Crystal, who bought me lovely breakfast in Sydney.
- Thanks also to Saxons training institute for taking care of all the arrangements for our public classes.
- Ravindra, Sameer & Vijay for holding the fort at Chandoo.org while I am away
- Last but not least – thanks to you. Because you take time to read Chandoo.org, I find the confidence & support to dream something like this and achieve. Thank you.
Few Pics
Here are some pics from the last 6 weeks.
Have a good weekend.
54 Responses to “6 Tips for Writing Better VLOOKUPs”
Hi, I am loving the VLOOKUP series this week. 🙂
Could you please expand a little on why you don't recommend using 1 or 0 in place of true or false? I am in the habit of doing this.
"You can even omit the last argument if it is 0"
Excel's default for the last argument is TRUE. Because of this, it's dangerous to omit the last arguement. I would use either FALSE or 0. Never omit if you want an exact match.
Nice series, Chandoo!
.
Your readers may be interested to know that the quickest formula method to do lookups in Excel is an array-entered INDEX.
.
This is one of the many topics covered in the Excel Hero Academy:
Excel Hero Academy
.
Regards,
Daniel Ferry
Excel Hero Academy
Dear Daniel,
I had used index-match with absolute reference for the ranges but when I am resorting the table the formula is not recalulating the lookup value combination.
Regards,
Anish Menacherry
@Anish
Can you post the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
http://chandoo.org/forum/
Please include a sample file so we can review the issue
1. Never use VLOOKUP/HLOOKUP - Always use Match /Index
2. Sort your data before performing a Loookup
3. Use 1/-1 option Match as it is at least 10 times faster than the 0 option- But modified to perform an exact match rather than an approximate match as described below
a) A Column containing a Match Fucntion to Find the Position with the 1/-1 option
b) A Status column containing a Index to check the status (present/not present)
c) Multiple array entered Index colums to pick
In tip number 5 you state, "you can even omit the last argument if it is 0" which is not correct. If you omit the last argument, Range_Lookup, is TRUE, as Mike Alexander points out.
Excellent series - Need some help from the expert. how easy it is to add/expand a named range in a lookup formula?
@Mike & Gregory: I am sorry for the confusion. The formula =VLOOKUP(value, range, column #) assumes last argument as TRUE.
Where as the formula =VLOOKUP(value, range, column #, ) assumes last argument is blank or empty which internally gets treated as 0.
And that is what I mean by you can even omit last argument. I state that "Remember, you must place a comma (,) after the column number if you are planning to use this." otherwise, this will not work.
@Andrew: I suggest not using 0 or 1 as they are more cryptic and lead to confusion when your spreadsheet gets to someone else's hands.
@Daniel: Thanks for that.
@Sam: Good tips. I would just add that using VLOOKUP / HLOOKUP is ok as long as they solve the problem you have and do not take too much time. The performance improvements you get with array entered index or other techniques are minimal when dealing with small and moderately sized data sets.
@Sundeep
Very easy
Have a read of: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/10/15/dynamic-chart-data-series/
Particularly Point 3. Create a new named range and type OFFSET formula
@Hui - Thanks.
If I have a large workbook with many Vlookups and if I change the range to named range...is there an easy way to change all the formulas? It is more of wishful thinking than a question 🙂
@Sundeep... You can use Apply names from formulas ribbon to apply names to a selected range. This technique works when the ranges are mapped to static references. Dynamic refs. thru OFFSET are bit more tricky.
You can use the find / replace to automatically replace all $A$1:$C$1000 with dynamic range lstData. See this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/02/17/spreadsheet-formulas-edit/
@Sundeep
On the Formulas Tab, Click on the Drop Down on the Define Name button and select Apply Names
Select one or all Named Ranges and apply
Excel will go through your worksheet/s and change the Ranges for Named Ranges.
i cannot believe i missed the new to 2007 formula "IFERROR". your mention of this will help reduce the number of characters in many formulars i use (with "ISERROR") by at least 40% along with commensurate reductions in spreadsheet size and calculation speed... not to mention future reduction in typing and debugging time in formulas. thank you. and thank excel.
Newbie here.
I am not able to understand the Tip#1. Use of "val", "tbl". I tried and it kept on giving error.
Chandoo's Tip#1: =VLOOKUP(valSalesPerson,tblData,3,FALSE)
Does it need column headings? And how do you l lookup the value I am looking.
Thanks in advance.
[...] 6 VLOOKUP Tips [...]
[...] VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH: Useful for looking up any text values [...]
I need some help with creating a formula. I have a list of names on tab 1. (About 20) On tab 2 I have a list of names and there total sales (About 3,500) I created a name range for both the first list of names on tab 1 (Producer) and a name range for the second list on tab 2 (Agent_List) The sales on tab 2 for each producer is in the 7th colume.
I need the formula to identify name of Producer (Tab1) from the Agent_List and then choose the total sales for that producer.
This is the formula I put together and I only get #REF!
VLOOKUP(PRODUCER,AGENT_LIST,7,FALSE)
@JimH
I assume you are adding a column next to the Agent_List on Tab 2 and looking up values from the Agent_List and retrieving values from the Producer list
.
So the format for your equation will be:
=VLOOKUP(A2,Producer,7,FALSE)
or
=VLOOKUP(Agent_List,Producer,7,FALSE)
.
Note that the named range Producer must be at least 7 columns wide, not just Column A or you will get the #REF! error also
Hi
Can anyone please help or this totally impossible in excel? I am trying to do a vlookup with a range of cells that contains "comments" in them and unsuccessful.
Thank you
@Lala
You cannot search within comments unless you use VBA
My tips are:
Pay attention to data types - no fly if mixing text and numbers. I run into this problem a lot with files downloaded from access that have a tendency to mix data types on me when it hits excel.
Pay attention to $ - If pulling from the same workbook, $ won't auto fill on your range and you will potentially miss hits.
Yeah, the data type mixing has bitten several folks I work with in the rear.
EG: I work at a company where marketing source codes are 10-alphanumeric. But, some codes are like "12345" while others are "123abc". When access or sql dumps to excel, the numerical ones convert to numbers while the text ones stay text.
So, what I do is create a reference column next to them in which I do a =TRIM([column]). Trim not only removes front/back spaces, it converts a value to text data type. This is useful, b/c sometimes sql db admins will store data with a fixed string length (eg: a column may get stored as char(50), which means it will have 50 chars no matter if it has to add extra spaces at the end to pad it out.) When you dump this to excel, the extra spaces remain at the end. So, the Trim command not only converts numbers to text, it removes padded spaces at the end. Very useful when working with sql dumps.
I have two sheets, in first sheet i have given a criteria of month (like jan, feb), then on another sheet i have month wise sheet like
jan feb mar
a 2 5 8
b 5 9 8
c 9 12 89
now i need in first sheet if i give criteria jan then answer is 2+5+9, or if i give feb then answer is 5+9+12 and like that, how to get that??
I am pretty well versed in VLOOKUP but I have a challenge I can't figure out. When I complete the VLOOKUP in one cell, it works fine. When I drag the formula down (using $ where necessary) the value from the first LOOKUP populates in the new cell. If I double click on the cell and hit 'enter' then the correct value is pulled in from the vlookup. Any suggestions why the formula isn't executing correctly until I hit enter?
@Nicole
It sounds like Calculation is set to Manual
Goto the Data Tab Calculation and set it to Automatic
Absolutely FANTASTIC!! Thank you so much. Slight variation on my version of Excel. I had to go to Formulas Tab then to Calculation sub-tab, Calculation Options, change setting to Automatic. Thank you thank you thank you. Saved me hours of more frustration!
[...] than maybe sorted, which it usually is anyway).Use COUNTIF or MATCH to speed up calculationAs many others have pointed out, VLOOKUP returns #N/A if the lookup value is not found. Instead of using a [...]
I have more than 2 columns in a table I'm so confused cuz the results i get is #N/A =(
I have a 2-sheet database. Sheet 2 has a list of Accronyms in column A and their description in column B. On sheet 1, column A is where you input your Acronym. In column B, the formula takes Acronym from column A, looks it up on sheet 2, and displays it on column B.
After some research, I found how to make custom text if there is not a match on the Acromyn. The question i have is, is that when there is no text in comumn A, sheet 1, column B, sheet 1 displays my custom text "ABBREVIATION NOT FOUND". I'm trying to write a forumla that leaves column B blank unitl there is an input in column A.
This is my current forulma:
=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A4,Description!A:B,2,FALSE)),"ABBREVIATION NOT FOUND",(VLOOKUP(A4,Description!A:B,2,FALSE)))
Any help out there?
Thanks,
Jerome
Hi Jerome... Thanks for your question. Try this formula instead:
=IF(A4<>"", IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A4,Description!A:B,2,FALSE),”ABBREVIATION NOT FOUND”), "")
Works in XL 2007 or above. For older versions use this:
=IF(A4<>"", IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A4,Description!A:B,2,FALSE)),”ABBREVIATION NOT FOUND”,(VLOOKUP(A4,Description!A:B,2,FALSE))), "")
Btw, to learn more about IFERROR see this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/11/iferror-formula/
I have 2 worksheet, the first one is like this:
A B C D
1 DOG 1 BROWN
1 DOG 2 WHITE
2 CAT 1 SMALL
2 CAT 2 MEDIUM
2 CAT 3 BIG
THE SECOND WORKSHEET IS LIKE THIS:
A B C D
ENTER# fORMULA 1 WITH VLOOK ENTER # FORMULA 2
(RETURN ANIMAL) RETURN TYPE
FOR EXAMPLE i NEED WORKS LIKE THIS:
2 CAT 2 MEDIUM
FIRST FORMULA IS EASY NOT PROBLEM. bUT FOR THE SECOND i DO NOT FIND HOW TO DO IT. PLEASE HELP.
This would be how I would handle your second formula, in your first worksheet, I would insert a column between C & D. In that column I would have a formula to concatenate the values in column A & C (example =concatenate(a2,c2)) which would result in:
A B C D E
1 DOG 1 11 BROWN
1 DOG 2 12 WHITE
2 CAT 1 21 SMALL
2 CAT 2 22 MEDIUM
2 CAT 3 23 BIG
Then in the second worksheet formula 2 would be:
=vlookup(concatenate($a2,$c2),AnimalType columns D&E,2,false)
Great Stuff Chandoo
In your 6th post you say use SUMIF instead of VLOOKUP as it runs faster.
What if you have a spread sheet with repeated data and you only want to pull one value back?
would it be best to use a simple VLOOKUP
or something like: IF(COUNTIF < 2, SUMIF, VLOOKUP)
I have set COUNTIF < 2 (not just = 1) to take advantage of the fact that if COUNTIF = 0 you won’t get an error
Now if only you could use the column header name instead of the column index number in the VLOOKUP function.
Scenario: I have a list/table in one spreadsheet that I use to lookup values in other spreadsheets. If I insert columns in my list/table, I have to go into the other spreadsheet(s) and increment the VLOOKUP formulas' column index number to capture the right column of values.
Example: if I inserted a column in Table1, my formula:
=VLOOKUP(A1,Table1,2,FALSE) would have to change to:
=VLOOKUP(A1,Table1,3,FALSE),
it would be so much better if you could code something like:
=VLOOKUP(A1,Table1,Table1[price],FALSE)
If my lookup result is numeric data I could use sumif as suggested and use the list/table references; is there a similar function I can use for alphanumeric data lookups that uses list/table references?
[…] Read more – 6 VLOOKUP tips […]
tip:
you can use dynamic column reference for your look up if you want to pull multiple column values from another sheet with the same row reference without having to rewrite the the formula, e.g.
range a1:d1 = "header", 2 , 3, 4
b2 = vlookup($a2, LookUpRange, b$2, 0)
c2 = vlookup($a2, LookUpRange, c$2, 0)
b3 = vlookup($a3, LookUpRange, b$2, 0)
the above will bring back the value two columns away from LookUpRange in b2, 3 for c2 and 4 for d2 for the same reference, a2. By freezing just the column for your lookup reference value and just the rows for your column reference, you can drag your forums both down and right while keeping all reference both constant and dynamic... as oxymoronic as that sounds.
my TIP, building on what Andy says above re using a dynamic refrence: if you use the column functon in the header row - should someone add extra columns to the source sheet your lookup will adapt and still return the right result.
With the below formula I am getting "too many arguments for this function. any help?
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(M3,7),notes!A:A,1,FALSE),"Failure to process correctly",IFERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(n,2),notes!A:A,1,FALSE),"Failure to process correctly"))
Chaz - IFERROR only requires 2 arguments, you have entered 3 (the vlookup, the error message, the 2nd IFERROR).
Change your formula to the following:
=IF(isERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(M3,7),notes!A:A,1,FALSE)),”Failure to process correctly”,IFERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(n,2),notes!A:A,1,FALSE),”Failure to process correctly”))
Ian
Hmm, I'm not sure my formula will return the required output.
This tests if there is an error in the 1st vlookup, then checks the 2nd, and only returns the error message if both vlookups are errors. Is that what you wanted to do?
=IF(isERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(M3,7),notes!A:A,1,FALSE)),IFERROR(VLOOKUP(RIGHT(n,2),notes!A:A,1,FALSE),”Failure to process correctly”),VLOOKUP(RIGHT(M3,7),notes!A:A,1,FALSE))
I am trying to use a vlookup with a named range for the lookup array. This works fine. However now I would like to replace this named range with a cell reference (which obviously contains the name of the named range) but get a N/A error message. Is this really not possible?
vlookup ( A1, named range, 2, 0 ) . This works
vlookup ( A1, F1, 2, 0 ) . Where cell F1 contains the the text with named range. This does not work.
Any tips or thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you in advance
@Erik
Use: vlookup ( A1, Indirect(F1), 2, 0 )
Works like a charm. Thank you!
Some opinions on the pros and cons of using named ranges on http://www.excelvlookuphelp.com along with a few other hot tips
Hello,
Chandoo,
Can u explain me how to use vlookup formula in 2 sheets in one excel workbook.
Hi am Using Index match function to overcome the limitation of Vlookup. But I am failed to get the same result as i get in Vlookup. in vlookup as we can expand the Columns of Vlookup in one single shot. Like Vlookup($A4,A1:G9,3,0) but same Result i Not get in Index match Function. Please help
@Satish
I will suggest that your list is unsorted and it is possible that VLookup is returning a wrong answer
Can you post a question at the Chandoo.org Forums
http://chandoo.org/forum/
Post a sample file and someone will review
I want to upload a Sample file Contain my Question. but i can't see and upload file button on the page. Please Tell how to upload the File
@Satish
You can't upload a file here
But you can on the Forums
Goto:
http://chandoo.org/forum/
Select a Forum
Start a New Thread
Upload a File, is at the Bottom next to the Post Button
Refer: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/posting-a-sample-workbook.451/#post-73705
thanxx... Soon i will Upload It.
Dear Excel super-users,
Sourcing data from different sheets.
I'd like to specify in the vlookup formula which sheet to source data from.
This source sheet will change depending of the name of the person selected in a specific cell C1 on the sheet where the vlookup formula is being run from.
I'd be grateful for any tips to achieve this.
Regards,
Sean
dear sir /madam
please proved me lookup formula
and exp--------- insert picture formula attched excel sheet
Us the Column formula in place of the 3rd argument will save you time when you want to bring in all data columns!