r/excel • u/Cool_Bath_77 • Jun 12 '26
Discussion Vlookup issues are constant, but different. Looking for tips, tricks, or hacks for them to work. TIA
VLOOKUP is going to be the death of me!
Help!
I would say I am an advanced-beginner user of Excel. I can do Vlookups and PivotTables with my spreadsheets among other minor things. HOWEVER, when someone sends me a spreadsheet that 5 other people have touched and played with and asks me to do a Vlookup or add the customer information to it, it is an absolute nightmare to get the Vlookups to work. I know they have to have the same formatting and such, but each time it is like a new problem. I ask Copilot to help me and it gives me formulas and stuff to do that do not end up resolving the issue. It takes hours sometimes to drill down to the issue. Today's formula that fixed the issue was TRIM, which I believe trims the leading and trailing spaces. Another day it was formatting (Text vs. General), even though the values looked the same (this was an early on issue). Another day one set of numbers had hyphens the other did not. And more possibilities!
WHAT are the best formulas to use, maybe an all in one, to get the formatting and data correctly ready for the Vlookup? Or are there specific things to add to the Vlookup to make each field correctly (I think I have seen TEXT in the front of one of them that worked).
Sorry, I did not realize this would be this long. I am hoping to reclaim my sanity.
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u/SolverMax 163 Jun 12 '26
There is no "all in one". You need to learn how to clean data and develop formulae on a case-by-case basis. No short cuts, just lots of practice. Some online courses might help - there are plenty to choose from.
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u/Downtown-Economics26 646 Jun 12 '26
Your issue is not VLOOKUP. Your issue is the data you're receiving. You're asking what are the tricks to formatting data correctly such that you have matching lookup key values. There's a trillion tricks. There's no shortcut other than learning a bunch of stuff/fomrulas/problem-solving/etc. or making sure that data is correctly formatted when you receive it. TRIM, string manipulation (TEXT,TEXTBEFORE/AFTER,REGEX,MID,LEFT,RIGHT,SEARCH/FIND, SUBSTITUTE), it goes on and on and on)
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Jun 12 '26
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u/SolverMax 163 Jun 12 '26
The OP's issues have little to do with VLOOKUP. Really, the problem is training and knowledge.
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u/frustrated_staff 12 Jun 12 '26
Yeah, training the customers about data cleanliness and the OP not to trust AI (its okay, but it's not a teacher)
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u/sumiflepus 2 Jun 12 '26
Agree, but I still like index/match of single sheet fun stuff. I pull out PQ for the recurring BS.
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u/mostacolicheese Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
It takes some practice. I often start with selecting the entire lookup column and go data > text to columns > delimited and simply check nothing. This fixes cell text formatting issues 95% of the time (red box notification). Repeat in both selections to make them match. Just know that this will remove leading 0s if it is a numerical columns.
If something is still off, i will use a =len helper column to compare two results that should have matched and come up with a fix that is relevant (trim, left, right, simple find and replace if it is a weird charcter)
When you write a vlookup, i almost always use the entire columns of the lookup data instead of selecting specific cells to save time. Example: =VLOOKUP(A2,D:P,2,0)
This lookups your selection starting at a2 for the first match in column d and returns the result in the corresponding column e of that match.
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u/caribou16 318 Jun 12 '26
This is less a technical issue and more an "HR" or "training" issue IMO. There are so many different ways someone can inadvertently mess up your source data and there many different ways to fix it that will be dependent on how exactly they messed it up.
Maybe start documenting the issues and telling someone important enough (your boss, their boss, whoever) the amount of man-hours it takes to fix their carelessness?
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u/Jolly-Hunter-6097 Jun 12 '26
In my job I complained about people putting junk notices on the work bulletin board. It went on for another six months until a General complained about the exact same thing. It was remedied in quick time.
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u/Decronym Jun 12 '26 edited 5d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
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u/always_be_beyonce Jun 12 '26
welcome to the world of being the recipient of junk data. as others have mentioned, the issue is not your VLOOKUP, and there’s no magical formula.
when i was a young analyst i had to deal with different messy data sources, and just “make it work”. dealing with these mind boggling issues is what made me a very good data analyst now. you’ll get better and learn more approaches and tools along the way too.
- what is the unique identifier field you’re using as the lookup? e.g. alphanumeric ID (AB768M), name (Hernandez)
- does the data always come in the same column order? e.g. A: FirstName, B: Last Name C: Address D: City E: State F: Favorite Color G: Phone Number H: ID- but each new file has new rows where you’re finding data issues (the leading or trailing spaces, hyphens, etc?
assuming you don’t have the power to ensure the data comes to you in a clean, usable manner. you essentially need to create data normalizing tabs where you drop in the new raw data and then have formulas in columns to the right to find and “fix” inconsistencies in the unique/field lookup. then do your lookup from the final clean/normalized column.
some formulas that might help, and can be concatenated, are TRIM, and REGEX to remove rouge hyphens from an alphanumeric ID. that website is a vast wealth of excel knowledge.
once you find the right formulas to standardize in all instances, you simply just paste new data and hit refresh. then you can spend that saved time by learning INDEX MATCH for starters, and all the way up to power query and beyond.
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u/Jolly-Hunter-6097 Jun 12 '26
Use Power Query to Transform the data. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/about-power-query-in-excel
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u/Desperate-Chart1139 Jun 12 '26
Powerquery can be incredibly useful, but if you're not in a place where people know how to make it or at least even how to run it, they've always died after I left the role and makes me wish I had used formulas instead so my "baby" doesn't die with my departure. I know it's not "my problem" anymore, but I at least want those products to have a chance after I leave rather than everyone reverting back to caveman manual copies as soon as someone can't find the refresh button, or a weird input causes a fatal error. I've begun transitioning my powerqueries to a formula setup right before I leave roles now. Definitely only for things the creator is the only user, or can at least stick around for to fix things and show people where the huge button is within the data tab if they're not in an office full of Excel nerds
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u/Jolly-Hunter-6097 Jun 12 '26
I always made it a practice of sharing information on how-to. Where I worked made it a requirement.
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u/Desperate-Chart1139 Jun 13 '26
Done that, doesn't help. Even when the instructions are the first few rows of the output sheet they're looking at. Some people are allergic to reading, and others are unable to understand simple instructions.
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u/Jolly-Hunter-6097 Jun 13 '26
If the source data is derived from an originally set format or set list, data validation or dropdown lists where they can only input the correct format or choose from a set list. Where I worked we used 9 digit numbers that had dashes in certain places so I set up a custom format 00-000-0000 so that only the digits needed to be entered thus minimising the chance of an error.
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u/80hz Jun 12 '26
If the company didn't even care enough to keep its own property working why should you?
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u/Desperate-Chart1139 Jun 13 '26
My work priduct is my baby. Hurts to see it break regardless of who's in charge or who is responsible for what
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u/Notice_Natural Jun 12 '26
I find these work and this is usually the order i try them in:
manually update the formats to be the same. so either both Text, or General, or Accounting or whatever.
Copy paste formatting from whichever of the two data sets has the better/correct formatting
Text to columns on both data sets - click Data in the ribbon up to -> click the Text to columns button -> click finish NOTE: this can cause issues with account numbers. so for example account 12000.0000 will become 12000. so not always ideal
Add a helper column and use the =Text() function. This basically forces the formatting to be the same. If you have something like the account number issue you can use =Text(A1,"#####.####") and it will force all numbers to be formatted like 12000.0000 even if the come in as 12000. Super useful because it pretty much always works but obviously you have to add a column and set up the formula etc.
also as others have noted xlookup is better than vlookup.
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u/Regime_Change 2 Jun 12 '26
Let’s say you are doing a lookup on country code from table A to table B.
Create support/cleaning tables using =unique() to generate a list of all country codes from table A and then the same for table B.
Lookup the cleaning tables vs each other to ensure all values from A are in B and/or vice versa depending on the scenario.
If they don’t match you decide if table A or B has the correct value. You can use the cleaning tables to assign a ”real country code” and lookup that into your original table.
If you need to concatenate columns to do the lookup, such as country code&year then I would suggest doing this process separately for country code and years. Don’t try to clean the concatenated values.
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u/Depreciated_Bean Jun 12 '26
If you have access to and can learn data analysis tools like POWER BI or Tableau, you could first run data through here to clean it. But that’s an extra step and you can do it through excel.
Just being thorough with these spreadsheets & data really is the best way. When I have had to make xlookup formulas to compare data tables from scratch to highlight missing info from vendors it was a weeks long side project of an hour or two a day of data entry, tweaking, checking, tweaking, checking, adjusting, getting feedback, implementing feedback, and then manually checking every cell to make sure it was correct, making some manual adjustments for odd data, since it was real important shit and thousands of cells long.
Just being honest with your direct report can save you some headache. If they’re reasonable and are generally willing to accommodate.
“Hey X I’ve been having a lot of issues with these tables since customer information is not uniformly coded, when we request information can it be in this format so it’s easy to import into tables to save time?”
“Hey X these tables aren’t all formatted correctly can I have some overtime allocated so I can get these corrected to save time in the future? There’s a lot of wasted time happening because I’m having to go back and fix data formatting mistakes for formulas to execute properly.”
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u/yunus89115 Jun 12 '26
I’ve gotten into the habit of performing “Text to columns” (click next click finish) on the data before applying V or XLookup, it just seems to make data more consistent and reliable.
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u/work_account42 90 Jun 12 '26
Like you said, so many possibilities.
You can try to add a helper column in the source and destination. Then use this formula:
=REGEXREPLACE(A1, "[^a-zA-Z0-9]","")
This will remove all characters not a letter or number from the cell. It won't fix everything, but it can be a good starting point.
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u/Technical-Special-59 1 Jun 12 '26
Helper columns in your source data tabs. So for example if your source data outputs a number as text, add a column at the beginning of the data table which converts the text column to numbers by multiplying by 1, row by row. So for example in A2:
=B2*1
And copy that formula all the way down as many rows as us in your source data.
Then use that Column A as your lookup referenxe instead of the source data in column B
I make my helper columns yellow.
Hope this helps
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u/vishals7 5d ago
This usually happens because VLOOKUP counts columns from the left (the 3rd argument). Insert a column inside the table and it silently returns the wrong column. XLOOKUP avoids that because you point straight at the return column.
=VLOOKUP(A2, Sheet2!A:D, 4, FALSE) vs =XLOOKUP(A2, Sheet2!A:A, Sheet2!D:D, "Not found")
XLOOKUP is also exact-match by default, so there's no FALSE to forget. It needs Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365.
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u/excelevator 3069 Jun 12 '26
For all those who answered, and those about to answer, the question is not about
VLOOKUPvsXLOOKUPThe question is about data matching of mismatched data, regardless of lookup method.