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I am a bit confused with lookup/match and the lookup wizard in excel 07 does not seem to allow multiple sheets properly.

What I need is for cell B2:BXXXX on Sheet 2 to run the following and display the answer compare Cell A2:AXXXX on sheet 2 to the values on D2:D30000 on sheet 3, finding the exact match only if exact match is found, return the entire contents of Cell L2:L30000 on sheet 3 where the row is the matching row from D2:D30000 If no match is found, return #N/A is fine


Sheet 2
90336-N 32(formula is here)
90336-R #N/A (formula is copy down'ed this entire column)

Sheet 3

D   L
90336-N 32
90336   12
90336-Q 8

any help? - the entire sheet has alot of financial data as well as company databases that I cannot post, the data above is just simply some "fluff"

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2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote accepted

You also want to add IFERROR to the vlookup command. This will allow you to search for non-matches more easily and even designate them as something for example: =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,Sheet3!D$2:L$30000,9,FALSE),"CHECK")

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The most common approach is to use VLOOKUP. In B2 on sheet2 use this formula


You can then copy that formula down the column

The 9 indicates the 9th column of the range Sheet3!D$2:L$30000, because that's the column from which you want to return a value (the match is always done with the first column of that range). VLOOKUP with FALSE as final parameter only returns exact matches or #N/A (although it's not case-sensitive)

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