Vlookup, Lookup, Hlookup ..... who knows

[jimvola]

I am trying to sort through some information I have received from my company. It is a list of menu entree items. I am unable to sort the list becuase it would complete mess up the way they have it set up (Headers, formats, etc)

I am trying to make the whole thing easier for my managers. I want to be able to type in the reciepe number and be able to retrieve the name, portion cost, etc. I have used sumif for the needed numbers, but I am unable to get the text fields that I need.

I believe the different lookups require the data to be sorted. How do I get around it? I would like to be able to use a function like sumif but for text instead of numbers.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Brian from Maui]

See the Help files for using 0 (False) as the 4th argument in VLOOKUP.

 

[texasalynn]

would probably require an index/match but can't give you example without seeing a sample of your data

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

VLOOKUP, INDEX combined with MATCH, etc. work also with unsorted lists or tables. You need to set the match-type in VLOOKUP or MATCH to 0 (i.e., FALSE). See Excel's Help for examples or this board.

 

[jimvola]

Would it be easier to create a new tab that would put all of the reciepe information line by line? I also noticed there are multiple uses of the same reciepe number that I am having to by pass.

Jim