"Customizing Django Templates" was retired on August 28, 2023.

Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll

Intermediate Excel

Well done!

You have completed Intermediate Excel!

Sign up for Treehouse Back to Library

LOOKUP Tips and Common Errors

1:19 with Tyler Tallon

It’s easy to make mistakes when using a LOOKUP, so let’s discuss several tips to help you avoid some common pitfalls.

Downloads

Download the LOOKUPS spreadsheet to follow along. Remember, you'll learn best by doing this with me!

Related Discussions

Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.

Sign up

    Related Discussions

    Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.

    Sign up

    It's easy to make mistakes when using a lookup. 0:00
    So let's discuss several tips to help you avoid some common pitfalls. 0:03
    First, lookups always find the first match. 0:07
    So if the first column in your VLOOKUP range, the lookup value column 0:10
    contains duplicates then they will match the first instance. 0:14
    In a later video, 0:18
    I'll show you how to quickly highlight duplicates using conditional formatting. 0:19
    So in our example, if a county was listed twice in our table array, 0:24
    it would retrieve the data from the first one. 0:27
    Also be careful, if you insert or delete any rows, or 0:30
    columns after you have created a lookup, the row or column 0:34
    index number won't change automatically when columns are inserted or deleted. 0:38
    Finally if you get an N/A error, 0:43
    this means that no match was found which happens sometimes when using exact mode or 0:46
    false as the fourth command in the formula. 0:51
    In our example, 0:54
    this would happen if our first dataset had a county the second data set didn't have. 0:55
    Also numbers formatted as text can cause an N/A error. 1:01
    To make sure this doesn't happen make sure the first column of the range in 1:05
    the lookup value are both the same data type, both numbers or both text. 1:09
    These are just a few tips that I hope will help you out 1:14
    as you begin to use the lookup function. 1:16

    You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.

    Sign up

      You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace

      Sign up