VLookup in Excel

In Excel Vlookup is one of the most important functions which can be very useful when we are comparing any data with any reference table. For Example suppose you are a teacher and want to grade assignments of students and provide them a Grade according to the score. So you first create a reference Grade table and then compare the student's score with the grade table. We can achieve this using Vlookup.

Let us consider that you have a sheet which contains names of the students with corresponding scores

 Suppose your grading criteria is as below:

 65 > Score > 0       : Fail 

75 > Score > 65     : C   

85 > Score > 75     : B

95 > Score > 85     : A

Score > 95              : A+

Select the reference table:                                                                                             Right click > Define name

 Provide an appropriate name:

Now we have give a name to the range i.e table array. This concept is known as Range name in Excel. 

VLookup needs four parameters as input :
Look up value :  This is the value you want to query in reference table. here it would be B2
Table array : The reference table i.e here it would be reference
Col_Index_num  : This is the column number which gives the expected output. Here grade is the expected output and it is the second column so value is 2




                                                                               

The grades will be displayed corresponding to the scores from the reference table as below: