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