ADVANCE EXCEL – VLOOKUP BASICS

Basics of using the vlookup function

 Vlookup
o can really be quite a powerful tool for you and Excel.
o You can do several different things that can be useful.

EXAMPLE:

In those tutorials, I created this spreadsheet. That's a movie inventory of movies that I have, and
it's quite a short list, but for the sake of this tutorial, let's imagine that there are a thousand or
2,000 or 5,000 records here in this spreadsheet instead of just 20 or 30 movies. Let's pretend
that there's 2000 movies and I'm also going to have you pretend that instead of just six or seven
Columns of data, imagine that there's 20 different columns, you know, one of the columns list
the Action of the movies, another one lists the star of the movie. Imagine just a pretty big
spreadsheet with lots of columns and lots of Records. Lots of rows. One of the challenges that
we have when you get a huge spreadsheet like that is, how do I pull out the data that I want to
see? And that I want to think about from a spreadsheet and I'm going to show you how to use
vlookup to do that. So one of the best ways to think about vlookup is to think of it as being

 Similar to looking in the index of a book to find out what is in the book or looking through a
catalog to look up something that you might want to buy and you can find the part number. You
can find the cost and things like that.
 Another comparison would be that, it's similar to looking up someone in a phone book. You look
up their name and you find their address or their phone number. So in this spreadsheet again
imagining that it's much bigger than it actually is, let's say that because it's so big. I find it hard
to know. Know what the rating is of a particular movie and I would like to be able to type in the
name of a movie and find out exactly what the rating is for that movie to do that.
o I'm going to need two cells and so I'm going to use these two cells here and I'm going to
go to this cell
 Type in equals vlookup and notice as soon as I do that, I get a pop-up that is going to hopefully
help me to do this formula correctly. I'll put in the left parenthesis and it gives me some more
details.
 Says that I need to now put in a lookup value, a table array, a column index number, and a
range, lookup. And each of those notice is separated from the rest with a comma. So lookup
value comma table array, comma column, index number comma range lookup. Now the official
name for each of these four different sections of this formula is argument. Each of these is an
argument. So, this is argument number one, two, three, and four. So, let's look at argument one.
First it, Asking for the lookup value. So basically, what is it that I know? What is it that I'm going
to look up information about but it's something that I already know. So again think of going to a
library, you know, the name of the book that you want. Let's say it's the book A Wrinkle in Time,
which is an awesome book written for young adults, but I think it's great for anyone and I hear
Disney is soon to make it into a movie. But anyway, let's say at the library, you would like to look
up where to find that book, what you know is,
 Name of the book in that case. It's a wrinkle in time. So that's the lookup value. Now, in this
case. I would like the lookup value to be changeable. I would like to be able to type in. Let's say
The Princess Bride and have it. Tell me PG or the Martian and have it tell me PG-13. And so
because I want it to be changeable. I'm just going to click on Cell. H8. I'll click there. So, basically,
whatever I type in cell h8, that will become the lookup value. All right, I'll put it. A comment in
their next. It wants the table array. And if you've watched my Excel Basics tutorial, you know,
the term range. And that's basically what this table array is. It's a range of your spreadsheet that
you want Excel to look at. And to be careful. I really want to include all of the columns that I
have here. Now, you may not want to when you do this yourself, but I want to go in and choose
A3 through F-22. So that'll be all of the actual. From my spreadsheet. It's not going to include
some of this other stuff that I put. Later, so to put that range into the formula. All I have to do is
click on it and drag to select that range that I want it to look through. Now that's really easy
when it's such a small spreadsheet, but imagine a giant spreadsheet. Like I asked you to pretend
that this is in that case, it wouldn't be practical to click and drag. So that's okay. You could just
go in and type a 3 through and that's indicated by a colon F-22. Okay, great. So I've done the
first argument. And the second argument. Now, onto the third argument, the third argument is
it wants to know a column index number. So, what this is asking for, it's asking for you to pick
one of the columns now, it's not looking for column a column B, column C. No, in this case. It's
not what it's looking for, is, whatever the table array, is that you selected. Whatever that first
column in the array is, that's number one. Then number two, number three, number four,
number five, number six. Now, what if I hadn't included?

 I'm a in the table array that I selected. What if I had started here in B3 instead of a three. Well,
then this would be column 1. This would be column to. So it doesn't have to correlate to the
ABCDEF. It can just be whatever it is that you selected for the table, array, or you clicked and
drag to highlight. The far left column is column 1 then call them to then call them three then call
them forth, then column 5. So now I'm going to do that argument. I'll put in a comma to
separate the second argument and the third argument. Meant and how do I know which column
to select? Well, the column I select is the column that has the information that I want to draw
out. So if you remember my example, I want to be able to type in the name of the movie and
find out what its rating is. So that means I want column C. But remember I've got to put it as a
number. So I go to the array, the table array that I highlighted. And I say, okay, this is the first
column. This is the second. So I want the third column. So I type in 3 comma next it wants a
(inaudible)

 Should look up and this is kind of tricky and a little confusing for me as well. As for many people.
Basically, what this is asking is is there a requirement that h8 be an exact match to what's in the
spreadsheet and this is mostly useful, I think with numbers. So for example, let's say instead of
typing in names of movies. What if we typed in the date that the movie was purchased, if I were
to type in 2007, it would produce a PG, but what if I typed in, Thousand six. And what if there is
no 2006 entry here? Well, if I in this fourth argument in the range lookup, if I have it set to be
true then it will look for an approximate match. It'll find. Basically whatever is the closest, if I
type in the word faults, that it's going to require an exact match. If you don't type in the exact
match, it's not going to produce the result that you're looking for. In this case. I'm going to leave
it as faults. So I'm going to require the exact match and then you're supposed to the right
parenthesis, but you don't really have to. So I'll just type in enter and look. It's giving me a
message saying the value is not available. So, this is an error. Now, the reason that showing me
an error code is because there is nothing typed in this cell here. So let's test it out. I'm going to
type in, I Am Legend. Let's see what happens. Look, it says PG-13. So that seemed to work pretty
well. Let's try it again. I'll type in Groundhog Day. So I typed in Groundhog Day hit enter and it's
PG. Now once You have done this if you've set up a vlookup like this, if you regret how you've
laid it out on the screen like I do a little bit. Let's see what we can do to make it so that you type
the word here and it tells you on the right whether it's PG, I think that would look a little better.
So to do that. I'm just going to double click here and I can see up here in the formula bar. That's
the formula. I'll just copy that and then I'll paste it here and notice that it gives me an error
again. So I need to double click on it and look at my formula and see where it messed up
because I copied it from One column to the next look, it shifted everything to the right a little
and also down because I moved down one so I can repair this formula just by clicking on the first
argument clicking and dragging to highlight it. You can also do this up here in the formula bar.
And then I'll click on h8. Next, we go on to the second argument, which is the table array, the
table array was changed quite a bit. I'm just going to click and drag, but remember with a larger
spreadsheet, you would need to just type in the cell names. That would be much faster and the
The column index number is still valid 3 and the range lookup false. So now I can hit return or
enter on the keyboard and I can actually delete the one that's above. So now I have a space to
type in the movie name and it tells me the rating off to the right. Okay, let's do another
example. Just to test it out. I'll type in The Giver and it changes to PG-13. So I hope that you
found this tutorial to be helpful. This is just the beginning of what vlookup can do for you. But to
be honest, this is how I use it. Him of something or the part number of something and then it
tells me other data. So, like I said at the beginning, it's kind of like, looking up a book at the
library and finding information about the book or looking up somebody's name in the phone
book and getting their address or getting their phone number or the city that they live in. Now, if
I wanted to, of course, I could highlight these and I can change them to be bold and centered
and things like that, and kind of create a nice little space here that it's a tool. Now there are a
couple of rules. You need to know if you're going to use vlookup, probably the first rule is that
you need to have your data in vertical columns. So I have column titles here and the lists of
items. Go vertically, right information about those items in the list, go horizontally, but the
actual different records go vertically. In columns. It has to be that way and the reason why is
because vlookup the V in V lookup means vertical, so if you have your Sheet set up the other
way. It wouldn't work. There is such a thing as hlookup for horizontal. But anyway, that's rule.
Number one that you need to have your data arranged vertically, in the spreadsheet in columns.
The second rule is that the information that, you know, that you're going to be typing in the Box,
basically has to be to the left of the data that you want to find. So the data that I know in this
case is the names of the movies, right? That's what I'm going to be able to remember and
produce and type in this. So that in my spreadsheet that needs to be to the left of the
information. I want to look up and find. In this case the rating, if your spreadsheet is not set up
that way, you need to move the column that has the information that you're going to be able to
type in the Box. You want to move that to the left because that is a requirement. So if you keep
those two rules in mind, you should be able to start using vlookup successfully. So, I hope that
you found this video to be helpful. If you did, I'd appreciate it. If you'd please click the like
button below this video and please, He's consider connecting with me on my social media,
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another video from me, at least, every Monday.
EXTRACTING DATA FROM SPREADSHEETS USING VLOOKUP, MATCH AND INDEX

 when you have a lot of data on a worksheet and you want to extract some of that data to use on
other worksheets the vlookup match and index functions are great ways to do it
 these functions work in any version of Excel on Windows or Mac and they also work on the web
in Google sheets and also on the web versions of Excel with the vlookup function and
 the V stands for vertical you have data arranged down columns and by the way there is also an
 H lookup function where you have data arranged across rows H is horizontal and it works the
exact same way as vlookup so there's really no need for me to cover that
 In this tutorial you can grab actual data from a worksheet like you see here and use it in other
sheets where as the match and index functions are really concerned with the positioning of
data, where your data are located rather than what is the actual value of the data.
 if you want to follow along in this tutorial using your own workbook go right ahead if you'd like
to use the sheet that I have here on screen you can see it's called vlookup.
 vlookup links to different tables and they could be on the same worksheet or more likely on
different worksheets even in different workbooks using a unique identifier and the unique
identifier that we're going to use in this tutorial is going to be an order number but in other
situations it could be other things you can think of it sort of like is a serial number if you work
with databases you might be familiar with the concept of a primary key so with this table in
mind let me explain how the syntax works like any function.
o we start off with an equal sign and then you have the name of the function vlookup and
open a parenthesis there are three wired arguments in one optional argument the first
argument is what's called the lookup value and that's that unique identifier that we are
talking about and in our example that's going to be the order number
o now because you have to have commas separating the arguments in any function after
you put in the lookup value you type in a comma and then the second argument is the
table range and in our example that's going to be the entire table but keep in mind it
doesn't always have to be that then we put in a comma and
o the third argument is the column number now let's say we want to get the sale amount
and you can see here that's the last column in this table in this instance that's column
number eight now don't get that confused with the fact that you can see here it's
column H there's no law that says that the table has to start in column a so let's say for
example if we start the table in column B then the sale column is still going to be the 8th
column but it's going to be in column I instead of column H so that's why we're referring
to the actual column number of the data table not the column of the worksheet anyway
o after you put in the column number you put in a comma and then that optional
argument at the end is true or false and this could be a little confusing in this instance
we're going to say false and what that means is is this false means don't give me an
approximation give me an exact amount true means an approximation is OK now
there are times when an approximation is alright but when we're looking at order
numbers and when we want to plug in an order number and find the sale amount of
that order number we really don't want an approximation and that of course we close
the function with a matching parenthesis one other thing because we're going to put
 this entire table in a formula we need to make sure that we're referring to the table with
an absolute reference because we're going to put in the vlookup function and
o then we want to autofill down that is we want to copy and paste down the formula all
the way down a couple hundred rows understanding absolute references is beyond the
scope of this tutorial but suffice to say it could be a little messy when you're using an
absolute reference in a long formula so what I find it's easier to do is to create a range
name when you give a name to a range like to this whole table that we have then you
could use that name in your formulas
o first I'll show you how to create a range name in Excel and it works the same way in
Windows or Mac and then I'll show you how to create a range name in Google sheets
o now the range itself you have a choice you can have it include the column headers or
you could have it be just the data below the column headers and the written version of
this tutorial I included the column headers so just to be a little different this time I'm
going to include only the data and not the actual column headers so I'm going to do is
this I'm going to click over here on cell a5 so that's the first cell of actual data and I want
to select down and across to the last cell here so in Windows I'll press control-shift end
if you're using a Mac you want to press command shift end and you see that select all
the way down and across to the last cell
o now to apply the name I click up here in the name box now not on the drop-down but
on the actual box here and when you do that you see that cell reference gets
highlighted and I'm just going to call it data, you could call it almost anything you want
you can't have spaces or dashes in the name though and you're limited to 33 characters
so I'll just call this in data and press the Enter key
o and there it is you can see that data is up there in the name box and we know that
works because I can click somewhere over here and then when I click this down arrow
and choose data you can see it's selected and again I did not include the column headers
creating range names is a little different in Google sheets so here I have the same exact
worksheet and you can see I'm in my web browser so I'll click on the same first bit of
data we can't select from a cell down and across in Google sheets you have to select
first across and then down or first down and then across so I'll press control shift right
arrow or if we're on the Mac command shift right arrow and now I'll press control shift
down arrow or on the Mac command shift down arrow now that I've done that I go up
to the data menu and over here I choose named and protected ranges and then in his
box over here I'll call it data and then click done and you can see it's over there and then
I'm done with that I can close this little panel with that X so in this tutorial this is the
only thing that's different between Google sheets and Excel okay so let's enter some
formulas already enough talking right now I'm on the source data sheet let's click on the
sale announce sheet and you can see I already have the order numbers and what we
want to do is use the order number to look up the sales amount like I was talking about
so let's start entering the formulas 8 equals V lookup and if you get that little syntax
error you don't have to type the whole thing just press the tab key and it gives us a little
bit of syntax helping the look of value we know is that order number so I'll click that and
I type a comma now the table array that's the table we had so we don't have to go back
to the source data sheet and select all that and make it an absolute reference because
we already called it data so all I have to do is type the word data now if you did not
create the range name you will have to go to the source data sheet and select the whole
thing and make it an absolute reference also Excel understands that oh yes I did create
that range name so it's in here I'll show you also a little trick let me just backspace over
that let's say I have a lot of range names or I created that range name a long time ago I
don't remember what it is I could always press the f3 key on the keyboard and get the
paste name box and just double click it and I'll type a comma and then it asked me for
the column index number we said before that's column eight that's where the sales
figure is put in a comma and here it's even giving us a little syntax help do we want true
or do we want false we want an exact match so you could type the word false or you
could double click it and it puts it in close a parenthesis and right and it's 40 in fact if we
go back here so we're stadia we can see les md that's correct let's go back here and we
want to autofill this so click the cell and if you're not all that familiar with autofill and
you notice that there is a little dot in the lower right corner of the cell when you put the
mouse corner over the dot the mouse pointer becomes this little crosshair and even if
you know autofill here's something that most people don't know you don't have to click
and drag this down for 200 whatever res all you have to do is double click the crosshair
and it fills in all the way down so you can scroll all the way down and you can see it's
filled in all the way that's because there are no gaps in column a if there is a gap
somewhere in column a then that autofill will just kind of stop where that gap is if you
want to practice this on your own you could go here and maybe to column C or column
D and go and use vlookup to find maybe people's last names or the states so let's take a
look at the match function we can click the match tab here in the worksheet as I said
earlier the match function isn't really concerned with the value of data but location of
data actually it's kind of like the game of Jeopardy you tell it what the value is and the
match function tells you where the value is kind of if you think of maybe you're walking
down the street and you say to somebody oh we're is number 135 and they tell you Oh
number 135 is the 4th building down so let's talk a little bit about the syntax of the
match function we say equals match open the parentheses right just like any function
and then you put in the lookup value that's just like what we were talking about before
that's going to be the order number put in a comma and you have the table range table
range is the same as what we were talking about before in our case we're going to use
the entire table you put in a comma and then you enter the type now what's that type
all about when you have that value you're looking for you may have a value that's just
above it or just below it and to determine whether or not either of those are acceptable
that type you can put in negative 1 0 or a 1 negative 1 means you'll choose the number
that's the closest above it if you choose a positive 1 it's the closest number below it if
you choose 0 it means you want an exact match also with the match function you have
to be aware of whether your data are sorted in any particular order so you have to have
data sorted in descending order to use the negative one option you have to have your
data sorted in ascending order if you're going to use the positive one option and you can
see that's the default or if you don't care if it's in one order or another then you can use
a zero since we're looking for only one piece of data we're looking for that order
number we need to go and define another range name so let's go back to source data
and we're going to be concerned just with the order number so we already have a range
name that's for the entire table now we just want a range name for the data going down
column a so kind of like what we did before you want to click on cell a5 press control
shift down arrow or command shift down arrow on the Mac let's go up here click inside
the name box and I'm going to call this order underscore number underscores are okay
dashes are not spaces are not okay and press Enter if you're doing this in Google sheets
use the same procedure that I showed you just before so let's go back to the match
worksheet and we'll put in the function we'll say equals match open the parentheses
lookup value we said that's the order number comma the lookup array right that's what
we just put in the order number if you want you could press the f3 key and you can see
there is the two range names double-click type in a comma and we have our values in
ascending order so I'm going to choose the one click it those parentheses and enter it
and now we can see that order 10:13 is in the 13 th position now if you had included the
column headers and this would be showing 14 and we can eyeball this let's go back here
and we can see there is order 10 13 if we count from the top that is the 13th one down
finally let's talk about the index function and I'm going to click on the index tab of this
worksheet the index function is kind of like the opposite of the match function and it
deals with two dimensions it deals with rows and columns so we tell it here's the road
number and the column number I'm looking for which means the particular cell now
return to me the value that's in that particular cell so let's take a brief look at the syntax
of the index function we say equals index open the parenthesis first argument is the
table range or data range again it's the entire table that we've been looking at put in a
comma and then you have the row number put in a comma and then optionally the
column number now this is a little weird because the official documentation tells us that
column number is optional but it's really the row number could also be optional and
what that means is when you have a large table like what we're working with you do
want a row number and a column number but let's say you only have single row well
then you don't need a column number or if you only have a single column then you
don't need a row number so let's put in the function and I'm going to be here on cell c6
so I'm going to say equals index open up the parentheses and just like before the range
is the entire data range you can see it finds it for us that we put in comma and we want
row nine comma column three close the parentheses enter it and now we can see that
that is somebody's last name and let's take a look go back to source data and we can see
there it's the ninth row down and third column over if we go back here and let's say just
for example maybe I want to go to row 13 and see it's already changing column 4 then I
have the state so if I go back over here I can see all right there it is this is row 13 column
4 so having these three functions that can look at a large worksheet and extract value
and positioning of data are really great tools this way you can have one sheet that has
all of the data in the universe and then individual sheets where you're picking up just
those pieces of data that you need and of all of the parts of Excel that people ask me
about vlookup is far and away the most common.
COMBINING DATA FROM MULTIPLE CELLS IN EXCEL

 how to easily combine data from more than one cell in Excel. So, let's look at this spreadsheet
here. This is a customer relationship tracker for a hypothetical company. And these are all
customers of this company. You can see that. Their first name is here last name in a separate
column. The total amount of purchases that they've made from the company and some other
data. So what if I would like Combine some of this data together. Let's say to produce a
customer profile and to put that information in one column here at the right. So I can just click
here in G2 and I'll just type customer profile. Looks like it did not copy the format. I'll just click
here on the cell whose format I want to copy and I'll go here on the Home. Tab home, ribbon.
Click the format painter, and then click here, and it makes the format the same. Okay. So watch
How I can do this. How I can add the word Gina to the word Pullin, and let's say the total
amount of purchases that they've made in dollars. So I'll just click here and sell G3 and I'll type
equals. So this cell equals and I want it to equal Gina. So I click on Gina. And then I also want it to
include the word Pullin, but if I click on Pullin it changes to be 3, so what if I click Gina Plus?

 Pullin and hit return. Look Excel doesn't understand. It doesn't seem to compute. You know,
how do you add a name? Plus another name? So the way you do this properly is you type equals
click on Gina and then you type an ampersand or some people just call it the end sign. So a 3 m
%:. Now watch what happens if I tap enter or return on the keyboard. It says Gina Pullin it
combined the contents of cell A3. Three with the contents of cell B3. Now. There's a problem
here. There's no space between Gina and Pullin. So let's fix that. All I have to do to put a space in
is after the empress and type in quotation, marks a space, using the spacebar and then
quotation marks again and then type an ampersand again. So what this should do is it connects
whatever is in a 3 with a space and then it connects that with whatever's in be.

 So I tap return or enter on the keyboard and it worked. Now. Let's change it even more. I want
to add now, the total purchases. So I'll just add another Ampersand and I should probably put a
space in there again, or maybe a:. Let's try a colon and then I put the close quote, another
Ampersand and maybe I want another space in there. So I put in quote space close quote,
another Ampersand. And now I'm going to click on the total amount of purchases. Is here and
tap enter on the keyboard or return, if you're using a Mac. And look what we have Gina Pullin
$40. If I really wanted to get picky with this I could go in and add a dollar sign. So after the last
Ampersand quotation marks dollar sign quotation marks, I'll need another Ampersand tap
return, or enter on the keyboard. And now that looks just how I want it to look. So this is a very
simple customer profile, but it lets me know the names.

 Of the customers who have purchased the most from us over the years. Now. Unfortunately, I'm
going to have to do that again for every single one of these customers, right? Well, actually, no,
all I have to do is click on Gina, Pullin, $40 and go to the autofill handle. I'm going to zoom in on
 this a little bit, but you can see it here. Anytime, you've clicked on a cell in the lower right corner
of that cell. There should be a very small square. You can see it there. It's green. And that is It is
the autofill handle and what it does is that it copies when you click and drag it it copies
whatever is in the cell that is selected. Now, sometimes it doesn't just copy it extends and if you
haven't watched my tutorial on the autofill handle, you really need to do that. But in this case, I
really do just want to copy whatever is in this cell. Now some of you might say no you don't you
don't want to copy Gina pull in $40. Well, if you think about it, that's not really what's in this cell.
If I double click on that cell or if I just click on it.

 It's in. Look up here at the formula bar. You can see that this is actually a formula. It's not just
Gina Poole. $40, so I want to copy that formula down this column. So I'll click and hold that auto
fill handle and just drag down the sheet and release. And look what it did. It combined, the first
name, the last name and combine that with the total sales from each customer. Now, just one
thing to take note of the results here in column G, the end up being treated like text. So these
aren't really numerical, they have numbers included. But if I were to To do an autosum. It
doesn't really know how to handle that, because these aren't really numbers. They're just
formulas, that combine text with numbers. And the result is treated basically like text. And I
really think the more you use Excel, the more you'll see opportunities to use the Ampersand to
combine data from more than one cell and pull that data together into one cell.
CREATING DATA ENTRY FORMS IN EXCEL

 easy way to create data, entry forms in Excel and these forms. Make it so much easier to enter
records or data into Excel. You can see here on the screen. I have a pretty simple spreadsheet.
This is an employee list with names, hire dates, employee numbers, and departments. Let's say
that a business has decided that they want to have an employee sheet. And this is just the
beginning of setting up that Employee list now, imagine how time consuming and painful, it
would be to enter all of this data. For let's say, 200 employees. Yes, you can do it. You can just
click on the appropriate cell. You can type tab over type but doing it this way can lead to more
mistakes. And so let's look at how to set up and easy data entry form in Excel. The first step that
I'm going to have to take, is to go up here to the quick access bar. This is a handy bar where you
can add Add additional tools and features that you want to be able to access easily and quickly.
That's why it's called the quick access toolbar. And if you haven't already watched my previous
tutorial on how to customize the quick access toolbar. Please do so, but for the purposes of this
video, I'm just going to click here on this button. This is the customize, quick access toolbar
button. When you click that, it gives you a list of some of the items that you can add to the quick
access toolbar or take off the quick access toolbar, but if you look toward the bottom of this,
Pop up menu, there's an option for more commands and I'm going to click that. It takes me to a
list of popular Excel commands. But in this case, what we're looking for is not necessarily
popular. So I'm going to go down to either all commands or commands not in the ribbon. I'll just
pick commands not in the ribbon. And what I'm looking for is form. That's what I'm trying to
create a quick, easy data, entry form. So I'm going to browse down. Look for form. There it is, I
click on it. And if you'll notice Is here on the right side. There are some items already in this list,
compare those two. What's up above here on my quick access? Toolbar. It's the same things,
the same features are listed here, as are here in the upper left. So I want to add form to that list
having selected for my just click add. It's now added to this list. And when I click on OK, it will
now be added to my quick access toolbar. So there it is. Now that I have that button readily
accessible to me.
 It a data entry form for my Excel spreadsheet. Alright, the next thing we need to do is take this
data that I have here in my spreadsheet and turn it into a table. For some reason, that's a
prerequisite of using these quick forms. So how to turn this into a table. All I have to do is Click
somewhere inside the data. How about here? And then here on the Home tab, home ribbon in
the Styles group. There's a button that says format as table. Now, there is a faster way to do it. It
once, you've clicked anywhere in the data, you can just hold the Ctrl key and tap t for table and
that will bring up this pop-up. And here Excel has tried to guess what? My data consists of and in
99% of the cases. It, does it correctly. You'll notice that there's a dashed line, that's kind of
moving across the top here and on the left and on the right, that is outlining the shape of the
table and in most cases, it gets it perfectly correct. If not you may need.

 To change some of the numbers here. You may need to click this and then outline what you
want to be included, or you might need to check or uncheck my table has headers. I'm just going
to click, OK, let's see if it works. It looks like it did. I can tell that Excel has identified these items
 here as headers. So I think that worked just fine. And now, let's move on to the next step at this
point. I just want to have clicked somewhere in the table. So I'll just make sure that I've done
that, I click. And now I go up here to the quick. Access toolbar and click the form button. Now,
notice what it did. It has identified 22, records or rows in this table. It doesn't count the header
row. It just skips it. But you'll notice that record. Number one is Gina Pullin here at the left. But
all of the data and information related to Gina Pullin is listed vertically. In this case instead of
horizontally. Now, there are a couple of reasons why this is helpful.
 The spreadsheet with like 14k. His AR-15 columns. You wouldn't want to have to click this bar
and drag to the right and type in the data or to tab over up to 14 times. In order to enter in your
data. It's kind of cumbersome to do it that way. And so, that's why you might want to do what
I'm showing here by creating an easy data entry form. Now if I click find next, look what it does.
It goes to the next record Marcelina Restrepo, click find next again, Regina Loftus and so forth
and it's numbering those Records here at the top, right? So I can click through those. Now. Let's
say it's time to resume entering data for the employees of this company. I can click new notice.
It says, new record. I just click and next to name. I'll type the next employees name. If I tap tab,
it does move to the next data entry cell hire date. Now, you can just type that in the way you
typically would maybe with the day, then the month and the year, or you can hold the Ctrl key
and tap semicolon, and that puts today's date.

 Into the form. In this case. Gary Larson was not hired today. So I will go ahead and change that
to a different date, put in the employee number and I can either click to the next cell in this
entry form, or I can tab just like I did before. But in the department. And at this point, I can tap
enter on the keyboard. It inserts the record into my spreadsheet and gives me a new blank form.
If I close and browse down the page. You can see. There's Gary Larson hire date employee. / and
Department jumping back into the form is super easy. I just go up here on the quick access
toolbar. Click form. I'm right back in there. I want to enter a new employee and I simply resume.
So if you do a lot of data entry, you're going to find yourself really prefering. These easy data
entry forms that you can create and use an Excel and it's really easy to do while we're here in
this form tool. I want to point out some of the other features and buttons that we have. So
we've looked already at

 You notice that there's also delete. So this is a mistake. Obviously. I don't know how I made that
one, but I can just click delete. Displayed record will be permanently deleted. That's exactly
what I want. So I click OK and it's gone. We also have a find previous button. So that goes from
number 25 to number 24 to record number 23, Etc. You can also find next that advances to
higher numbers, and then we have a criteria button and a restore button. Let's look at the
restore button, so, I'm going to click find previous a few times here. We have a person named
Eileen osterberg and let's say that the company is considering changing her Department from
sales to customer service so I can just type that in. But what if I realize that that was a mistake? I
can just click restore and it goes right back to the way it was before I started changing the data
in this form. So as long as you don't click close or tap enter on the keyboard everything that you
type here is easy to undo just by clicking.
  The restore button. Okay, one button left to look at besides clothes and that is criteria. The way
criteria works. Is you click it and then you enter criteria into this form and then Excel will see if it
can find one or more of the records here in the spreadsheet that match the criteria. So for
example, I would really like to find someone who has a name that includes the word Bob and
the hire date doesn't really matter. The employee number doesn't really We matter, but the
department should be Communications. All right, so I have Bob and Communications at this
point. All I have to do is tap enter on the keyboard. And look, if found Bob in Communications,
there is now. You may at first think that this number here in the upper, right? Indicates that
there are 25 or 18 Bob's in communication. But if you click next, you'll notice that's really all
there is just one Bob in Communications. So what if I want to see everyone in?

 Actions. Not just Bob to do that. I'm going to close the form, open it back up, and go to criteria
put in Communications tap, enter on the keyboard. And now look it found Regina a leftist if I
click next Palm a new meister and there is good old Bob again. So I hope that you see how useful
and Excel data entry form can be, it can take your data entry tasks, that might be two horizontal
and it can make it vertical and notice that you can scroll. So it It'd be 10 15, 20 different bits of
data. That you're entering in and it makes them vertical not horizontal and it gives you these
tools at the right to also help you to search within the table that you've created.

REMOVE DUPLICATE TOOLS

 We're going to focus on duplicates. So you can see here. I have a spreadsheet of synth pop
bands and albums and this spreadsheet belongs to a hypothetical synth-pop CD store. And you
can see there's a list here of some of the classic synth pop bands and their latest releases, but
I'm also including here, some more recent synth, pop bands and ones that you may not have
heard of before.
 When I initially created it, I was focusing on the different quarters of the Year quarter, one
quarter to quarter three. And so the result is that I end up with several different records for
each band. And that's what I wanted in this spreadsheet to begin with. But let's say I decide, you
know what, I just want to create a list of all of the Bands, whose music I sell, or maybe I want to
create a list just of all of the album's that I'm selling. Let's look at how we could do that. What I
have to do is just go Go to data and look on the data ribbon in the data tools group. You'll notice
 that there's an option to remove duplicates. When you click that by default. It's probably going
to check all of your columns. So it's going to look for duplicates throughout the entire
spreadsheet at this point and that may not be what I want. If I just want to see a list of the
unique band, titles in my spreadsheet. All I have to do is unselect all and then choose band.
 Look for duplicates, only in the list of bands, I click. OK it found 33 duplicates and remove them
15 unique values remain. So I click OK. And look at that in. Now is a list just of the bands, who
CDs? I hypothetically sell. So that's how you can remove duplicates and how you can pull out,
just the unique data in your spreadsheet. So now, of course, I could go up and choose file save
as and I could save this. This as a different separate spreadsheet, that's just a list of all the bands
and then here in my original spreadsheet, if I wanted to keep the list, the way it was, I could just
exit out and not save over the original and I should be able to have both copies of the
spreadsheet. So I think remove duplicates is a very useful tool. I hope that you found the tutorial
to be helpful. If you did, please click the like button below and consider connecting with me on
my social media, websites, like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, and definitely subscribe to my
YouTube channel.