vlookup ... I'm kicking the Dust ...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken
  • Start date Start date
K

Ken

Excel 2000 ... After spending last 20 minutes searching
for a format issue with "vlookup" (as some values were
bogus) ... I finally discoverd error to be in how I had
written the formula.

=vlookup(lookupvalue,range,col)

when it should have been

=vlookup(lookupvalue,range,col,FALSE)

My ? is ... As a novice excel user ... Why would the
default for "vlookup" be set to anything other than
an "EXACT MATCH"? (Note, I did find the solution in Excel
Help for "vlookup", but curious as to why default set to
NON MATCH rather then EXACT match ... as this did cause me
some heartburn to figure out).

Once again ... My Thanks to the many Excel Wizards that
support this board ... Thanks ... Kha
 
hi,
An example of default use is when you have a bunch of
dates and a grid of annual periods(basically sorted
range). For example,
7/1/90
7/1/91
.....
7/1/04

and you need to lookup just the begining of a period.
Also, vlookup it a volatile function, meaning that it will
recalculate every time the change is made to a
spreadsheet. Try a few thousand cells with vlookup using
exact match.
So, it is generally recommended to sort your range first
and use default or True option.

HTH,
Kolyan
 
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