Referencing multiple items

I have used VLOOKUP and such in the past but what I want to do is make sure three things match (3 column items) before copying items from one file to another. VLOOKUP only allows one item.. is there a way to make it check multiple things before copying items? Thanks

Hi, and welcome to the forum.


Yes, the technique I generally use is to create a helper column, and use this to concatenate the values from the other three columns, i.e. =A1&B1&C1, then use this as the subject of the VLOOKUP() - or indeed =MATCH() function.

HTH

I never thought of that. Thank you!

Originally Posted by msbaath

I never thought of that. Thank you!

Hi,

That's why we're here. Glad to be of help.

Rgds

This method works fine save when one of the columns contains time. Do you know why it would do that?

Hi,

It should work with any value. A Time is just another value, specifically a decimal of 24 hours, so you should see for instance 0.5 for 12:00 noon. So concatenating a Time and a Name you should see "0.5Bill"

Why do you think it's not working, or are you saying that you have a volatile =Time(hh,mm,ss) function which keeps changing?

Rgds

I have time in the format "hh:mm:ss" and the two times that I am trying to correlate differ by some milliseconds.. which I think is due to rounding. For some reason I can't get them to match, I used function round but no use. The method you mentioned works perfect.. I am just trying to figure out how it would work for this scenario. Thank you for all your help.