Question

I have my data as follows :

---------input------    ---output---    
data1   data1   abcd    data1   abcd
data2   data5   efgf    data2   nopf
data3   data3   hijf    data3   hijf
data4   data7   klmf    data4   
data5   data2   nopf    data5   efgf
data6   ....    ....    data6   
data7   ....    ....    data7   klmf
data8   ....    ....    data8   

Explanation:

• Column1 has all elements.
• Col2 is subset of col1.
• Col3 is respective values of Col2. (key-value pairs)
• Col4 and col5 is the output I want.

Here, I need to copy the Col3 values if Col2 key is present in Col1.

How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, you can use the vlookup function to lookup the “keys” in column 3 and return the values you want in column five.

Assume column one starts in A2, column 2 in B2, column three in C2, column four in D2 (and is just pasted from column 1) and column five in E2, which is where you’ll put the formulas to look up your values. The data are in rows 2 through 9.

I’m assuming that the “….” characters that you show in columns B and C are actually in your data.

The formula in cell E2 should be:

=IF(IFERROR(VLOOKUP(D2,$B$2:$C$9,2,0),"")="….","",IFERROR(VLOOKUP(D2,$B$2:$C$9,2,0),""))

You would copy the formula down through cell E9.