Managing Data on excel

Hello and welcome to the forum,

You can easily accomplish this using a series of vlookup formulas. This thread contains ideas and examples to get you started.

abousetta

Please see attached file with two sheets: AccountView and Data. On AccountView sheet you can enter account number and data will populate in the cells below.

Hi,

If you google, vlookup, there are a literally a million tutorials and videos on how to use it. It is one of the most used functions in Excel, and you should familiarize yourself with its cousins (Hlookup, index/match). These three functions will up your ability to use Excel markedly.

Good luck.

abousetta

Hi Alkey,

Small world... I grew up in Lake Alfred/ Winter Haven/ Auburndale region. Wonder how Polk County has changed over the past few decades.

abousetta

Hi abousetta, it is good know there are folks that once lived here. It did change quite a bit for the past decades. The weather is nice this time of year.

I currently live in a mild arctic climate, so I'm hoping Florida is still warm . Replaced the bass fishing for walleye fishing through 50" of ice. Never imagined I could burn my hand and get frostbite at the same time... Good times!!!

I guess, OP left for today...

Originally Posted by AlKey

Please see attached file with two sheets: AccountView and Data. On AccountView sheet you can enter account number and data will populate in the cells below.

The OP wants to do the VLOOKUP based on the customer name, so to use VLOOKUP, the customer name and account number columns need to be reversed in the data table so theat the lookup column (customer) is leftmost. The AccountView tab could be enhanced with a drop-down box for the customer name using a data validation list that refers to the customer column on the Data tab.

For the OP's benefit:

What a VLOOKUP query does is match the lookup value in the leftmost column of the array given in the formula, then looks across to the column stated and returns that result.

=VLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_array, column_number_in_array, true/false) where false returns an exact match and true returns an approximate match.

Originally Posted by AliGW

to use VLOOKUP, the customer name and account number columns need to be reversed in the data table so that the lookup column (customer) is leftmost

Not necessarily... look at the examples in the link I provided the OP.

Originally Posted by abousetta

Not necessarily... look at the examples in the link I provided the OP.

I missed that! Very interesting ... :-)

Index/ Match is more flexible, but more difficult to use by someone new to Excel.

Another argument for VLOOKUP is: why would you use two functions (INDEX and MATCH) if this task can be accomplished with one? Besides, for the layout that was suggested there is no speed or usability benefits from using INDEX/MATCH.

Originally Posted by blueblink01

Dear all,

Another way is to use Index Function. This function is better than vlookup

Thanks

Define "better".

This small example shows you how you can do what you want by using a table for your data which allows the data listing to be dynamic in formulae relating to the data. There is a small table on Sheet2 with the names which is also a table so you can add names and the drop down list in B2 will automatically be adjusted to the customer names.