I need help with creating a VLOOKUP formula that pulls information from one worksheet to another. I have two sheets - one called ‘Products’ and another called ‘Orders’. In my Orders sheet, I have item codes in column C and I want to get the corresponding cost values from my Products sheet.
In the Products sheet, the item codes are stored in column A and the costs are in column B. I’m trying to populate the cost information in my Orders sheet by matching the item codes.
Here’s the formula I attempted:
=VLOOKUP(C2, Products!A:B, 2, FALSE)
This formula appears to work and gives me results, but I want to make sure I’m using the right syntax for cross-sheet references. Are there any potential problems I should be aware of when using VLOOKUP between different sheets? Is this the standard approach for referencing ranges across worksheets?
Yeah, that formula syntax works perfectly for cross-sheet references. I use similar setups for inventory tracking all the time - super reliable. Just watch out for data types. If your item codes mix text and numbers, they need to match exactly between sheets or VLOOKUP throws errors. Learned that one the hard way. Also, wrap your formula with IFERROR like =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(C2,Products!A:B,2,FALSE),“Not Found”) so when item codes don’t exist in Products, you get “Not Found” instead of those ugly #N/A errors all over your Orders sheet.
The formula looks good, but use a specific range like Products!A2:B1000 instead of A:B. It runs way better with large datasets. Heads up - Google Sheets gets weird when you delete rows in the source sheet. Your VLOOKUP results can shift around without warning. Keep both sheets in the same file too. If you move the Products sheet later, all your formulas break and you’ll need to update every single reference.
your formula looks solid! just watch out for spaces in sheet names - you’ll need single quotes like ‘Products Data’!A:B. if you’re copying the formula down, throw in some absolute references like Products!$A:$B.