VLOOKUP result displaying #N/A

[favorgirl]

I have 2 worksheets:
1 ) has 14,000 employee entries ( usernames (IDs), first and last names, dept, etc.) called Employee Data_2013 a.k.a. "the master list"
2) The 2nd sheet called Results has all of the employee usernames (ID numbers) that I want to pull from the master list

In the Employee Data_2013 worksheet has the usernames located in column B of this master list. The Results sheet has all of the usernames located in column A. I used the following formula and had the result "#N/A" returned to me:

=VLOOKUP('Employee Data'!A:J,2,FALSE)

Any advise as to what I am doing wrong?

[shyam sundar]

hi

can u pls share the sample excel

[Pete_UK]

You've missed the first parameter - the lookup value. But, if your usernames are in column B (with the ID numbers in column A ??) you can't use VLOOKUP as it can only look for matching values in the first (left-most) column of the table. Try it like this:

=INDEX('Employee Data'!A:A,MATCH(A2,'Employee Data'!B:B,FALSE))

Hope this helps.

Pete

[Harribone]

Two things to help you:

1) the 'Employee Data' should be 'Employee Data_2013' to reference the correct sheet and you need to tell the formula which cell contains the lookup value (assumed in row A)
2) if you employee ID doesn't exist you will get N/A as a result. To correct this wrap the VLOOKUP around an IFERROR:

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The "" can be changed to "Not Found" or similar if you want ("" will just leave the cell blank)

[Pepe Le Mokko]

What you are trying to do is not very clear, but in any case if you have 14k rows, an INDEX/MATCH combination will be much faster than VLOOKUP.
Perhaps add a small sample sheet indicating what you need to achieve?