I am wanting to exactly match two ID numbers from two differing worksheets within one work book. Once matched I am wanting to retrieve a row value from the second worksheet into the first. Any help much appreciated.

Question

I am wanting to exactly match two ID numbers from two worksheets within the one work book. ID numbers are non linear. Once exactly matched I wish to retrieve a corresponding row value from worksheet two and have it appear in worksheet one against the correct ID number. I have been looking at IF, VLOOKUP, and MATCH functions and suspect that what I want to do requires a combination of two or more. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
regards Vaughanh

Answer 1

Vaughan,
Data A:D is all cells start at column A thru column D.
There is built-in help using the menu item "View > Show Function Browser"  in the search field (top right) you can enter vlookup and you will see the detailed description.
From this we see:
VLOOKUP
(search-for, columns-range, return-column, close-match)
search-for:  The value to find. search-value can contain any value type.
columns-range:  A range of cells. range is a reference to a single range of cells, which may contain values of any type.
return-column:  A number that specifies the relative column number of the cell from which to return the value. return-column is a number value. The leftmost column in the range is column 1.
close-match:  An optional value that determines whether an exact match is required.
close match (TRUE, 1, or omitted):  If there’s no exact match, select the column with the largest top-row value that is less than the search value. Wildcards can’t be used in search-for.
exact match (FALSE or 0):  If there’s no exact match, return an error. Wildcards can be used in search-for.
So... the 2,0 means return the value form the same row as the lookup value but from the 2nd column of the range.  3, 0 means from the 3rd column.  the ", 0" means exact match