Categorizing labels??

**gvb** · 11-05-2008, 03:55 PM

Newbie question

=

I think this may be a LOOKUP question or a nested IF statement but... i have a column A with a large variety of names and i want column B to categorize and simplify column A into other labels.

So,

if column A = dog, cat, mouse column B = animal

if column A = pink, blue, green column B = color

etc,etc... obviously my example is simplified but same principle. i cant seem to get any of the logical functions to work for the amount of column A variety i have.

any thoughts,
greg

**Ron Coderre** · 11-05-2008, 04:06 PM

Perhaps something like this will work for you....

With
E1:F6 containing this list:

dog	animal
cat	animal
mouse	animal
pink	color
blue	color
green	color

And A1 containing an item from the first column of that list.

This formula returns the category for that item:

B1: =VLOOKUP(A1,$E$1:$F$6,2,0)

Does that help?

**gvb** · 11-05-2008, 04:35 PM

i dont really understand that vlookup function very well. let me be a little more specific.

i have a list of lables in column A, and i can easy just type in the value for column B, but it will take me a year as i have 1000 rows of data for column A. I need to write a simple formula which will output text based on the value in column A, therefore i can drag the formula down instead of manually typing all the names.

its basically a nested IF, but i have more than 7 values in column A so i cant keep adding IF statements.