When writing a formula that refers to cells in another worksheet, you can of course type that other sheet name followed by an exclamation point and a cell reference manually, but this would be a slow and error-prone way.Ī better way is point to the cell(s) in another sheet that you want the formula to refer to, and let Excel take care of the correct syntax of your sheet reference. ='Project Milestones'!A1*10 Creating a reference to another sheet in Excel In a real-life formula, which multiplies the value in cell A1 in ' Project Milestones' sheet by 10, an Excel sheet reference looks like this: For example, an external reference to cell A1 in a worksheet named Project Milestones should read as follows: 'Project Milestones'!A1. If the worksheet name includes spaces or non-alphabetical characters, you must enclose it in single quotation marks.
In other words, in an Excel reference to another worksheet, you use the following format:
To reference a cell or range of cells in another worksheet in the same workbook, put the worksheet name followed by an exclamation mark (!) before the cell address.
EXCEL READ ANOTHER EXCEL VLOOKUP EXAMPLE HOW TO
In this tutorial, we'll start with the basics and show how to create various external reference types with detailed steps, screenshots and formula examples. The main benefit of using an Excel external reference is that whenever the referenced cell(s) in another worksheet changes, the value returned by the external cell reference is automatically updated.Īlthough external references in Excel are very similar to cell references, there are a few important differences. You just need to create a link between the worksheets (within the same workbook or in different workbooks) by using what is called an external cell reference or a link.Įxternal reference in Excel is a reference to a cell or a range of cells outside the current worksheet. When calculating data in Excel, you may often find yourself in a situation when you need to pull data from another worksheet or even from a different Excel file. Quite a few drawbacks, huh? If you’d like to know about an alternative to Vlookup, check out this post on the problems with Vlookup and the all new alternative, Xlookup.This short tutorial explains the basics of an external reference in Excel, and shows how to reference another sheet and workbook in your formulas. So you have to keep checking this argument to see if it’s still correct. Whenever you insert or delete a column in the Table array, the Column index number may not be correct anymore.If you do want this, you need to reorder your data. Vlookup cannot search for values back-to-front, only front-to-back.So the fourth argument should almost always be FALSE.
Even though most people will want to use the exact match instead.
You can use the Index and Match function as a workaround. You will have to change the table layout if you want to look to the left of that column. The Vlookup function will only look to the right of the lookup value in the table.The Vlookup function will only look for the lookup value in the leftmost column of the lookup table.īut what if you want to look up a value in the second column? You will have to reposition the table array argument to have its leftmost column one position further.So if your lookup value is MICHAEL you will also find Michael, mICHAEL and michael.