VLOOKUP function

Applies To

Tip: Try using the new XLOOKUP function, an improved version of VLOOKUP that works in any direction and returns exact matches by default, making it easier and more convenient to use than its predecessor.

Use VLOOKUP when you need to find things in a table or a range by row. For example, look up a price of an automotive part by the part number, or find an employee name based on their employee ID.

In its simplest form, the VLOOKUP function says:

=VLOOKUP(What you want to look up, where you want to look for it, the column number in the range containing the value to return, return an Approximate or Exact match – indicated as 1/TRUE, or 0/FALSE).

Paused

Tips:

The secret to VLOOKUP is to organize your data so that the value you look up (Fruit) is to the left of the return value (Amount) you want to find.
If you’re a Microsoft Copilot subscriber Copilot can make it even easier to insert and use VLookup or XLookup functions. See Copilot makes lookups in Excel easy.

Technical details

How to get started

There are four pieces of information that you will need in order to build the VLOOKUP syntax:

The value you want to look up, also called the lookup value.
The range where the lookup value is located. Remember that the lookup value should always be in the first column in the range for VLOOKUP to work correctly. For example, if your lookup value is in cell C2 then your range should start with C.
The column number in the range that contains the return value. For example, if you specify B2:D11 as the range, you should count B as the first column, C as the second, and so on.
Optionally, you can specify TRUE if you want an approximate match or FALSE if you want an exact match of the return value. If you don’t specify anything, the default value will always be TRUE or approximate match.

Now put all of the above together as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value, range containing the lookup value, the column number in the range containing the return value, Approximate match (TRUE) or Exact match (FALSE)).

Examples

Here are a few examples of VLOOKUP:

Example 1

=VLOOKUP (B3,B2:E7,2,FALSE)

VLOOKUP looks for Fontana in the first column (column B) in the table_array B2:E7, and returns Olivier from the second column (column C) of the table_array. False returns an exact match.

Example 2

=VLOOKUP (102,A2:C7,2,FALSE)

VLOOKUP looks for an exact match (FALSE) of the last name for 102 (lookup_value) in the second column (column B) in the A2:C7 range, and returns Fontana.

Example 3

=IF(VLOOKUP(103,A1:E7,2,FALSE)="Souse","Located","Not found")

IF checks to see if VLOOKUP returns Sousa as the last name of employee correspoinding to 103 (lookup_value) in A1:E7 (table_array). Because the last name corresponding to 103 is Leal, the IF condition is false, and Not Found is displayed.

Example 4

=INT(YEARFRAC(DATE(2014,6,30),VLOOKUP(105,A2:E7,5,FLASE),1))

VLOOKUP looks for the birth date of the employee corresponding to 109 (lookup_value) in the A2:E7 range (table_array), and returns 03/04/1955. Then, YEARFRAC subtracts this birth date from 2014/6/30 and returns a value, which is then converted by INY to the integer 59.