When you need to find information in a large spreadsheet, or you are always looking for the same kind of information, use the VLOOKUP function. VLOOKUP works a lot like a phone book, where you start with the piece of data you know, like someone's name, in order to find out what you don't know, like their phone number.

What is the purpose of VLOOKUP in Excel?

VLOOKUP stands for 'Vertical Lookup'. It is a function that makes Excel search for a certain value in a column (the so called 'table array'), in order to return a value from a different column in the same row.

What is the use of VLOOKUP in Excel with examples?

The VLOOKUP function in Excel performs a case-insensitive lookup. For example, the VLOOKUP function below looks up MIA (cell G2) in the leftmost column of the table. Explanation: the VLOOKUP function is case-insensitive so it looks up MIA or Mia or mia or miA, etc.