Lookup - what am I doing wrong?

[meredithsegal]

I have multiple sheets as part of a workbook. Several sheets contain master data about students. There are then sheets about each individual student that need to pull data based on the master sheets.

The student's name always appears in cell B2 of the sheet about that student.

I have a sheet called "attendance" where students names are listed in column A and their attendance is listed in column B.

For the field where I need to include attendance (H3), my formula is:
=LOOKUP(B2,Attendance!A1:A17,Attendance!B1:B17)

When I change the name in B2, the function does not update unless I go back to the H3, hit enter, etc. Even then, it is very erratic. What's going on?

 

[T. Valko]

I have multiple sheets as part of a workbook. Several sheets contain master data about students. There are then sheets about each individual student that need to pull data based on the master sheets.

The student's name always appears in cell B2 of the sheet about that student.

I have a sheet called "attendance" where students names are listed in column A and their attendance is listed in column B.

For the field where I need to include attendance (H3), my formula is:
=LOOKUP(B2,Attendance!A1:A17,Attendance!B1:B17)

When I change the name in B2, the function does not update unless I go back to the H3, hit enter, etc. Even then, it is very erratic. What's going on?

Are you sure you want to use LOOKUP?

See if this makes a difference:

=VLOOKUP(B2,Attendance!A1:B17,2,0)

Makes sure calculation is set to Automatic.

 

[meredithsegal]

What is the difference between Lookup and Vlookup? And what would I do when I need to pull data from a non-adjacent column? (student's name is in A, given data set is in D). Thanks so much!

 

[T. Valko]

What is the difference between Lookup and Vlookup? And what would I do when I need to pull data from a non-adjacent column? (student's name is in A, given data set is in D). Thanks so much!

The biggest difference is that the LOOKUP function requires the range of lookup values be sorted in ascending order for the function to work properly. If the range of lookup values are not sorted in ascending order there's no telling what result you will get.

Typically, LOOKUP is used to lookup numeric values although it can be used to lookup text and for other specialized applications.

With VLOOKUP, you have the option of using sorted data or not.

If your lookup values are in column A and the value to be returned is in column D then you would probably use something like this:

=VLOOKUP(B2,Attendance!A1:D17,4,0)

See this for more info on how to use VLOOKUP:

http://contextures.com/xlFunctions02.html