If you’ve used VLOOKUP in Google Sheets before, you know how it can make your work easier. However, it can be tricky to use VLOOKUP with a lot of data.
Luckily, Google Sheets has a powerful function called ArrayFormula that can help you VLOOKUP large data sets.
Imagine you have a spreadsheet with hundreds or even thousands of rows of data, and you need to find specific information based on certain criteria. Manually applying VLOOKUP to each row would be time-consuming and inefficient. This is where ArrayFormula comes to the rescue!
ArrayFormula allows you to apply a formula to a whole range of cells simultaneously, saving you a lot of time and effort. Instead of using multiple VLOOKUP formulas for each cell, you can use ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets to perform the calculation once and have it automatically applied to the entire range.
In this guide, we will walk you through the process of using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets. It’s a game-changer that will make your work much more efficient, especially when dealing with large datasets. So let’s get started!
A possible use case for deploying ArrayFormula With VLOOKUP in Google Sheets
Let’s imagine a scenario where you have a sales report with customer names, their respective product purchases, and the prices paid. And your job entails finding the total amount spent by each customer.
Without ArrayFormula, you would have to write individual VLOOKUP formulas for each customer, which would take forever. But with ArrayFormula, you can easily calculate the total amount spent for all customers in one go! Cool right? We thought so too.
Using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets
Now that we have established some background and shown you some possible scenarios where you can use ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets, it’s time we jump into the practical aspects of today’s guide.
For today’s tutorial on using ArrayFormula to VLOOKUP in Google Sheets, we will use the following sample data. Our sample data contains information about different football teams in the premier league and the points they earned, goals scored, and goals conceded.
Our objective with the following sample data is to use ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets to look up every team in column F and return their corresponding Goals scored in column G.
If this sounds a bit confusing, we are sure you’ll understand better when we jump into the practical aspects of this guide.
Step 1: Update the spreadsheet
Before jumping into all the exciting parts, we need to update our spreadsheet to reflect the columns where we want our results generated. Since we mentioned that we want to use ArrayFormula to VLOOKUP every team in column F and return the corresponding Goal scored in column G, we will go ahead and update our spreadsheet to reflect those.
After updating our table, here is what it looks like:
Step 2: Choose the cell where you want the result displayed
Having updated our spreadsheet to include the column where we would like to use ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets, we need to choose the cell where we want our result displayed. For this guide, we will use cell G2.
Step 3: Type in your ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP
Now, we are getting to the interesting part. With the cell where you’d like the result displayed selected, navigate to the formula bar and type in the following formula:
=ARRAYFORMULA(VLOOKUP(F2:F10,A2:C10,3,False))
Step 4: Hit Enter
Done typing in your ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP? Well, you have done all the hard part. All that is left to do is tap the Enter button on your keyboard and watch the magic happens:
If you followed all the steps exactly as we outlined above, you should have a spreadsheet that looks exactly like this:
From the screenshot above, you can see that using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets allowed us to seamlessly look up a range of data in column C without sweating it.
Although, for our example, we kept things simple. You’ll find using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets very useful when dealing with a large set of data.
Final thoughts
Using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets can be a bit challenging for beginners. However, once you understand how it works, you’ll find it quite simple and helpful.
In this article, we provided a brief introduction to using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets. We also presented an example of how you can use these functions together.
Moreover, we provided a detailed, step-by-step guide on using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets, complete with helpful screenshots. These screenshots can be valuable if you encounter any difficulties.
If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to leave a comment, and we’ll be glad to help you.
Frequently asked questions
When should you use ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets?
If you’re working with a large data set, using only VLOOKUP will take your time, as you’ll need to repeat the same steps several times. Thankfully, by using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets, you’ll be able to do more quickly.
We understand that it can be tricky initially, but when you get the hang of it, you won’t want to use another function. More so, today’s guide was carefully put together to help you use ArrayFormula with Google Sheets for your tasks.
What are some scenarios for using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets?
ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets can be useful in various situations.
If you need to retrieve multiple values from a lookup table, the VLOOKUP function alone won’t give you what you want. However, by using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP, you can obtain the desired results.
To illustrate this, let’s consider a simple example. With ArrayFormula and VLOOKUP, you can extract the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of customers from a lookup table.
Similarly, when using only VLOOKUP, you can only perform an exact match lookup. But with
ArrayFormula and VLOOKUP, you can also perform a partial match lookup. For instance, you can find all the customers whose names start with the letter “B” from a lookup table.
Using ArrayFormula with VLOOKUP in Google Sheets opens up these possibilities.