Need help with combining Data from 2 sheets

**Conradforbis** · 03-23-2012, 12:57 PM

Good Day,

I have 2 spreadsheets of training records. One contains an employees name (Column A), the training course (Column B) and a column stating if they have completed the training or not (Column C). The second sheet has the Employee name (Column A), the training course (Column B), the date the course was taken (Column C) and the date the course expires( Column D).

I'm looking to add the date the course was taken and the course expiry date to sheet 1. However, it's not a simple copy/paste. Not every course has an expiry date and courses without expiry dates are not indicated on sheet 2.

Is there any way to cross reference 2 columns from sheet 1 with 2 columns from sheet 2 and place the corresponding rows from columns C and D onto sheet 1?

I’m somewhat of an excel newbie and I have tried messing around with vlookup but was unable to make it work.

**firefly2k8** · 03-23-2012, 01:29 PM

Yes. Vlookup. Assuming your employee names have been entered consistently you could enter into column C of sheet 1: =VLOOKUP(A3,Sheet2!$A$2:$C$500,3,0), and into column D of sheet 1: =VLOOKUP(A3,Sheet2!$A$2:$C$500,4,0). Check the ranges and copy these down.

If it can't find a reference, it will return #N/A. You can hide these by conditional formatting. Or if you want to be clever you can use the iserror function, so your formula becomes: =if(iserror(VLOOKUP(A3,Sheet2!$A$2:$C$500,3,0)),"",VLOOKUP(A3,Sheet2!$A$2:$C$500,3,0))

**carsto** · 03-23-2012, 01:29 PM

This assumes the Employee may be listed multiple times as a result of taking multiple courses:

you need a helper column to do this.
on both sheet1 and sheet2 in E2 enter =A2&" "&B2, and copy down

On sheet1 C2 enter
=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0)),"not found",IF(INDEX(Sheet2!A:D,MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0),3)=0,"",INDEX(Sheet2!A:D,MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0),3)))
and copy down

One sheet2 D2 enter
=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0)),"",IF(INDEX(Sheet2!A:D,MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0),4)=0,"",INDEX(Sheet2!A:D,MATCH(E2,Sheet2!E:E,0),4)))
and copy down

I also made it so that if there is not exp date it is blank and if the combination of Employee & Course if not found, it states "not found"

**Conradforbis** · 03-23-2012, 02:43 PM

THANK YOU! So much! I got it all working now. This saves me at least 10-15 hours of manual copy/pasting (like i did last month).

I really appriciate it!!!