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Question about lookup functions autofilling spreadsheet rows

  1. #1
    Zerex71
    Guest

    Question about lookup functions autofilling spreadsheet rows

    Greetings,

    I was thinking about this problem this weekend and wanted to ask the
    group if this is possible to do.

    Suppose I have spreadsheet 1 acting as a database (or even a tab within
    a spreadsheet). Suppose further that from that master database, I want
    to select an entry to fill in a row in spreadsheet (or tab) 2. The row
    headings (field names) are equal in both databases/spreadsheets/tabs.
    My question is:

    Do I have to do a lookup function for every cell in the row that I want
    to fill?

    or

    Can I just do some sort of lookup function that will automatically fill
    in an entire row based on inputting a unique key or column?

    The way I understand Excel, it works on a cell-by-cell basis, which
    almost makes me think because I can't take the total row returned from
    spreadsheet 1 and fit all that into one cell (which is not what I want
    to do anyway), I will have to put similar lookup functions in each cell
    in that row, and that ends up not saving me much over just hand-copying
    the cells anyway.

    The specific example I'm thinking of is where spreadsheet 1 is a food
    database and spreadsheet 2 is a daily diet. I'd like spreadsheet 2 to
    look up the entry from spreadsheet 1 given only a key value (row 1 =
    food item) and then autofill the rest of the nutritional data from
    spreadsheet 1 into spreadsheet 2. For example, in spreadsheet two, if
    the user enters "Ham sandwich" in column 1, I want all the row data for
    a ham sandwich from spreadsheet 1 to be returned and filled into
    spreadsheet 2, rather than having to manually go back and forth between
    spreadsheets and fill in each cell one at a time. Make sense?

    Mike


  2. #2
    RagDyeR
    Guest

    Re: Question about lookup functions autofilling spreadsheet rows

    Yes !

    But, depending on exactly which columns you want returned, you can construct
    the lookup formula so that simply dragging it across to copy may be all
    that's necessary to do the job for you.

    Something like this, when dragged across, will *automatically* increment the
    column index number, starting at 2:

    =VLOOKUP($A1,Sheet1!$A$1:$K$30,COLUMNS($A:B),0)

    --

    HTH,

    RD
    =====================================================
    Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
    =====================================================

    "Zerex71" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    news:[email protected]...
    Greetings,

    I was thinking about this problem this weekend and wanted to ask the
    group if this is possible to do.

    Suppose I have spreadsheet 1 acting as a database (or even a tab within
    a spreadsheet). Suppose further that from that master database, I want
    to select an entry to fill in a row in spreadsheet (or tab) 2. The row
    headings (field names) are equal in both databases/spreadsheets/tabs.
    My question is:

    Do I have to do a lookup function for every cell in the row that I want
    to fill?

    or

    Can I just do some sort of lookup function that will automatically fill
    in an entire row based on inputting a unique key or column?

    The way I understand Excel, it works on a cell-by-cell basis, which
    almost makes me think because I can't take the total row returned from
    spreadsheet 1 and fit all that into one cell (which is not what I want
    to do anyway), I will have to put similar lookup functions in each cell
    in that row, and that ends up not saving me much over just hand-copying
    the cells anyway.

    The specific example I'm thinking of is where spreadsheet 1 is a food
    database and spreadsheet 2 is a daily diet. I'd like spreadsheet 2 to
    look up the entry from spreadsheet 1 given only a key value (row 1 =
    food item) and then autofill the rest of the nutritional data from
    spreadsheet 1 into spreadsheet 2. For example, in spreadsheet two, if
    the user enters "Ham sandwich" in column 1, I want all the row data for
    a ham sandwich from spreadsheet 1 to be returned and filled into
    spreadsheet 2, rather than having to manually go back and forth between
    spreadsheets and fill in each cell one at a time. Make sense?

    Mike



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