Question

I want to compare two price lists for different years from a supplier.

I have multiple items (thousands) with multiple different size codes for each and then prices for each item for each size.

I want to combine the two price lists, (I have 1 ‘Cost’ column in Euros and 1 in Sterling ‘Our Price’ with delivery included for each period). Some items (or particular sizes) are unique to either list. The items which appear in each list I want to compare the prices of (then work out +/- of change, which I’ll work into %’s). But I’m falling at the first hurdle!

How do I create a third sheet from the first 2 sheets (I’ve got both documents as different sheets within the same workbook) with a combined list, showing the prices for one year in one column and the prices for the second year in the next… Obviously items appearing in 1 year I want to only have 1 price for and a blank for the other!

Example of the data.

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This is the formula I’m using at the moment =LOOKUP(A2,’2010′!A$2:A$7940,’2010′!B$2:B$7940)

Which is almost working.

For some reason Excel is looking through the other sheet and not finding all the exact matches to the source… Some it does, most it doesn’t and it is then taking an average of similar matches?!

Answer 1

LOOKUP only works when the values in the lookup area are sorted in ascending order. You will be better off with using VLOOKUP and setting the last parameter to false:

=VLOOKUP(A2,'2010'!A$2:B$7940,2,false)