What is VLOOKUP Function?

Excel is a great tool used for data management. It is very helpful in evaluating the data. Excel provides many functions to arrange and interpret data in different ways. VLOOKUP is also a function used in MS Excel. When you want to search for any specific data in your Excel worksheet, this function is used.

Purpose of VLOOKUP Function

VLOOKUP is a short form for Vertical Lookup. It is a built-in function in Excel that enables the user to look at or find a specific value in the sheet vertically. It is not difficult to use. You will learn to use it once you look at its syntax and arguments in the upcoming sections below.

Syntax of VLOOKUP Function

The syntax of the VLOOKUP Function is as follows.

VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_number,[range_lookup])

Arguments

Following is the description of arguments used in the VLOOKUP Function.

• lookup_value: This is the value that you want to look up or find out in your sheet or data.
• table_array: location of the values in the Excel sheet is presented by the table array argument.
• col_index_number: This is the column number from where the value will be returned.
• range_lookup: there are two options in this argument. If we set the value to FALSE, this means we need an exact match. However, if we set the value to TRUE, this means an approximate match is also acceptable.

Example

For example, we have a worksheet containing a list of fruits with different prices. Now we want to look for the price of one particular fruit then the formula will be written as follows to use the VLOOKUP Function.

Price of: = VLOOKUP (B10; A3: C9; 4; 0)

When we press enter, the return value will be the price of the fruit with mentioned row and column number.