Comments on: VLOOKUP(), new to me

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:35:22 +0000

I love VLOOKUP, don't know how I do anything in Excel without it. I blogged about a workaround to the case sensitivity issue on my site here. It works.

By: David

David — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:09:31 +0000

After performing a VLOOKUP, I usually do a COPY – PASTE (SPECIAL) AS TEXT. Then I sort the sheet by that column and find all the rows that returned an error. I can then do a search-replace to clear those cells and can load the rows with values in that column.
Very important to do the paste(special), as every time you resort the sheet, Excel will recalculate the vlookup. For lots of rows in the source and destination sheet, this can take a very long time.

That said, VLOOKUP is good for a one-off, but for implementation data-loads, it is far better to load everything into Access, as it’s faster and can make better queries. Ezra Kenigsberg gave a super talk at Dreamforce 2007 about how to do this: http://blogs.salesforce.com/dreamforce07/2007/10/applied-data-qu.html

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:36:10 +0000

The point on case sensitive Id’s is a good one. Another fix for this issue is to install the sforce excel connector. This comes with a “Fixid()” function which automatically converts 15 character Id’s (not case sensitive) to 18 character Id’s (which are case sensitive).

By: Scott Hemmeter

Scott Hemmeter — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:29:28 +0000

VLOOKUP is a must. In fact, Salesforce even started using it in their formulas. It’s only available on Validation Rules, but it works ina similar way.

I used VLOOKUP extensively very recently when I moved myself from a powered up DE org to a new EE org. As I made the migration, I would use an Excel sheet with 2 columns in it (Old ID & New ID). Then as I loaded in data, I would use VLOOKUP to make sure my associations were right. For example, say I was working on a Contacts load. I would have already completed the Account load. In order to populate the Account ID on Contact, I’d do a VLOOKUP in my Id mapping table to translate the old value to new. Voila! This simple approach allowed me to move my data very quickly using the Excel connector.

One very important thing: there is a final parameter in the formula that is either TRUE or FALSE. In almost every circumstance you want to put FALSE. This forces an exact match. If I exclude this parameter, I have had occassions where the VLOOKUP picks the wrong row. I can’t explain why an Exact Match isn’t the default, but it’s not. Make sure you use that last parameter.

By: Vinod

Vinod — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:21:36 +0000

VLOOKUP is good times….but you could also do this with DemandTools and the Find/Report IDs module. Super handy.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:20:19 +0000

Kudos for posting this! In my experience, you need to watch how you use the final argument in the formula, the Range_lookup. I almost always set it to “FALSE”. From MS Help:
Range_lookup specifies whether you want VLOOKUP to find an exact match or an approximate match. If TRUE or omitted, an approximate match is returned. In other words, if an exact match is not found, the next largest value that is less than lookup_value is returned. If FALSE, VLOOKUP will find an exact match. If one is not found, the error value #N/A is returned.

Pivot Table is the other secret, power user feature in Excel. Use it with VLOOKUP and you’re en fuego! You can even do custom formulas and fields in the Pivot Table. I also use Pivot Tables to query Access databases, when my record set exceeds 65K rows (Excel 2003′s limit).

Recently, I was interviewing for an intern position. I asked the candidates what their power user function was. A few people knew PivotTables, but the guy who really impressed me said “Arrays”. I still don’t know what it does or how to use it….

By: Eric Fain

Eric Fain — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:48:13 +0000

Very nice. Also can be useful combined with the excel connector.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:50:28 +0000

Awesome, I’ll try out IsError()! Gotta love the 15 to 18 character case-sensitiveness of Salesforce Ids!

By: Peter C

Peter C — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:06:47 +0000

Agreed – vlookup has been a lifesaver on several occasions.

But a word of caution when using with the vlookup function with SFDC data – vlookup is NOT case sensitive, so if you are looking up SFDC data imported into Excel via a report/office plugin and therefore the 15 char Ids, it may bring back incorrect matches.

You can do an exact match with an amended vlookup (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214264), or you can create a custom auto-number field as an External Id in SFDC and use that for lookups.

Re Steve’s point, iserror() is another great function to wrap vlookup in – if it doesn’t find a match, you can then return something like a 0, rather the #N/A which screws up numeric functions.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:05:26 +0000

My other favorite functions for dealing with data: If(), IsBlank(), Not(), And(), Or(). Find() is great but annoying because if it doesn’t find the text in the field it throws an error, rather than returning null or something useful.

By: Pete 'Fifedog' Fife

Pete 'Fifedog' Fife — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:41:00 +0000

I would suggest anyone and everyone how has every worked with Excel know this one function! That and the use of the “If” function. I’m surprised at those people who live and die in excel don’t know these functions. I guess since I maybe a little younger and had part of my education as working with/in excel I take it for granted.

Even though the ‘help’ doesn’t explain that much I use it all the time just to see the examples.