Feb 12 2019 06:56 AM
Hi - I've set up a table to record project costs.
To save time, there are some standard unit costs that I want to pull through from another tab in the same worksheet.
For example Consultant 'Joe Bloggs' has a day rate of £500. So if the selections from the drop down lists in two of the columns on the costing sheet match 'Joe Bloggs' and 'Consulting Fees' I want the unit cost to automatically populate as £500.
I found a solution that described using the CONCATENATE function to merge two values into a 'helper' column in my look up table. It partially worked, but not all the values were coming through correctly. I've tinkered with it and now none of the values are coming through at all!!
Can anyone spot where I may have gone wrong on the attached file??
(NB: I did try this using IF and AND functions which does work, but the number of variables became too large)
Thank you
Feb 12 2019 07:52 AM
SolutionHi Angela,
That's because you use VLOOKUP in the approximate match mode.
So please fix it as follows:
=VLOOKUP((CONCATENATE(B6,C6)),'drop downs'!$A$1:$B$23,2,0)
By setting the last argument to 0 or FALSE, you're now in the Exact match mode.
Hope that helps
Feb 12 2019 08:11 AM
That's perfect - thanks so much for the quick and helpful reply!
Feb 12 2019 08:29 AM
You're welcome!
Anyway, there is a powerful alternative to VLOOKUP called (INDEX & MATCH).
By using this alternative, you don't have to use helper columns.
=INDEX('drop downs'!$A$2:$A$53,INDEX(MATCH(B6&C6,'drop downs'!$B$2:$B$53&'drop downs'!$C$2:$C$53,0),))
Regards,
Haytham
Feb 13 2019 03:05 AM
That's great - thank you, I've never seen that one before :)
Feb 12 2019 07:52 AM
SolutionHi Angela,
That's because you use VLOOKUP in the approximate match mode.
So please fix it as follows:
=VLOOKUP((CONCATENATE(B6,C6)),'drop downs'!$A$1:$B$23,2,0)
By setting the last argument to 0 or FALSE, you're now in the Exact match mode.
Hope that helps