Trying to use a VLOOKUP to match data...

Hello everyone!
I am new to using VLOOKUPs, and I was helped greatly by davegugg in an earlier thread, but I have a lot to learn.
I need some help in comparing and entering in data in excel using vlookups.

I currently have a list of ZIP codes for a group of contacts in one Excel 2003 workbook. As an example, the sheet looks like this:

ZIP Code | County
01001 empty
01060 empty
01301 empty
01550 empty

I need to get the county information for each of these ZIP codes. On a separate workbook, I have a list of every single ZIP code in the country and its corresponding county, like this:

ZIP Code | County
01001 Marcus
01002 Hampden
01003 Hampden
01004 King
01005 King
01006 Albany
...and so on until 97819. That's a lot of counties and ZIP codes.


I need to have the first workbook's ZIP codes access the second workbook's codes, and then grab the corresponding county. Is this possible?
I have tried numerous times to do a vlookup, but it just keeps giving me zeros all the way down.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Jon

With both workbooks open, did you try:

=VLOOKUP(A2,'[Workbook B.xls]Sheet1'!A:B,2,0)

where A2 is first ZipCode in the workbook you are trying to get data into, and Workbook B.xls is the name of the other workbook and Sheet1 is the sheet the table is contained in and columns A:B are populated with Zip codes and Counties...

After you close the source book, the path should populate in the formula.

Hi Jon

Let's assume your second book with all the codes is called ZIPS.

then in the first workbook in B1 enter
=VLOOKUP(A2,[ZIPS.xls]Sheet1!$A:$B,2,0)

This assumes that the information is held upon Sheet1 of Book ZIPS. If not, then amend accordingly.

But basically, if addressing another workbook, include the full workbook name within square brackets [c:\MyDocuments\ZIPS.xls] then add the Sheet name followed by a n exclamation mark ! followed by the range.