EXCEL BASICS DAY 2: JOIN THAT DATA

This is a skill that will separate you from the plebs!

We will be messing around with a VLOOKUP. It can be used for many scenarios, but the goal is to bring data from one table into another, based off of some matching data point. This picture should illustrate it pretty well!

For this video I have added a TOWN column in. Pretend we had an event and guests filled out their TOWN, but we wanted to save them time and decided we would get information for STATE and POSTAL CODES later, and much quicker than they could write it!

We can leverage the fact that TOWN occurs in both tables, and match the tables off that! Check out the video to learn more- and scroll south to get the VLOOKUP breakdown!

Video Breakdown

17 seconds: Breaking down the parameters of the VLOOKUP

• The value you are matching on. (lookup_value)
• The range of cells in the data source you want information from. (table_array)
• The number of the columns from the (lookup_value). (column_index)
• Exact/approximate match (range_lookup). TRUE or 1 = approximate, FALSE or 0 = exact.

45 seconds: Autofill

• When you have a formula written for one row, you can double-click the bottom-right box of your selection to fill all the data. You can also click-hold-and-drag for more control if needed.

1 minute seconds: Copy and Paste as Value

• Excel can have lots of things in cells. One is a formula. Formulas are dynamic, and can change when the input data changes. However, if we want the data to be static and not depend on other cells, we can select a range and turn it to straight text! This is done by going to an edge of your selection and holding right click on it. You then drag the selection to a desired place, or onto the existing one and release selecting ‘Copy as Value’.