How to start a vookup and get data from a number of sheets?

[Kyledrew]

Hi my names Kyle I just joined this forum for help on my v lookup problem. I'm new to excel and my boss requires me to be able to do a vookup to make things easier every month for stats. He wants me to set up one where it can find data on other sheets and when I update my spreadsheet the information automatically updates for duplicates, how long it took to install equipment, if they died or went hospital etc. I just wanted to know if anyone can explain how to start this simply for me as I keep looking at videos and can't get my head around it. Even if someone can start a v lookup for me for general data for clients equipment, installation dates, I'd number, package number, date of install, name and postcode etc I'd appreciate it ?

 

[Toadstool]

Hi Kyledrew,

The challenge you're likely to have stems from the comment "find data on other sheets" because VLOOKUP will only work on searching one sheet (unless you start nesting VLOOKUPS). There are a limited number of functions which work across multiple sheets, which Microsoft calls 3D, and there was recently a similar question which you can see here: Clueless, inventory quick search

Some challenges can be overcome by design changes and some solutions will depend on how many sheets and rows of data are involved (for performance considerations).

To answer your questions for one sheet querying one other sheet:

Here's my data

KyleDrew.xlsx
	A	B
1	Animal	Number
2	Dog	11
3	Cat	22
4	Goat	33
5	Mole	44
Animals

Here's my query:

KyleDrew.xlsx
	A	B
1	Search	Found
2	Goat	33
Query

Cell Formulas
Range	Formula
B2	B2	=VLOOKUP(A2,Animals!$A$2:$B$9,2,0)