VLOOKUP practice
VLOOKUP appears in many established office workbooks.
What this lesson covers
The first table column contains the key. Count return columns from 1 and use FALSE for an exact match.
3 exercises in this lesson
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Task 1 · cell E10
Find the revenue for "Notebook" using A2:E7.
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Task 2 · cell E10
Find the unit price for "Desk lamp" using A2:E7.
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Task 3 · cell E10
Find the units for "Cable kit" using A2:E7.
Using VLOOKUP at work
The syntax is VLOOKUP(key, table, column_number, FALSE). Once it is in your hands, the work it replaces is the kind of thing that used to mean scrolling a column and hoping you did not miss a row.
This is lesson 12 of 37. It takes a few minutes, and the exercises are marked the moment you submit rather than at the end.
Where people usually slip
- Ranges drift. Pointing at three cells when the data has six is the single most common cause of a wrong total, and it is invisible because the answer still looks plausible.
- Copying breaks a reference. Relative references shift when a formula is copied. If a value should stay put, lock it with dollar signs.
- The number is right, the method is not. Typing a total by hand produces the right answer once. A formula produces it again when the data changes, which is the actual skill.
How this is marked
Each exercise is checked against the result the formula should produce, and then re-run on a different set of numbers. A hardcoded answer passes the first check and fails the second, so it is rejected. That second pass is the part that makes the practice stick.