Let’s say we have 2 tables that we want to combine:

In both tables, we have Personal nr. and we want to add the data from the second table to the data from the first table.

For this we will use VLOOKUP.



VLOOKUP means ‘Vertical Lookup’ and it looks at some cells and searches for some value. It can then return the value from the cell next to it. Once you master this little gem, you’ll be using it all the time.

VLOOKUP works like this:
=VLOOKUP( ‘what_you_are_looking_for’, ‘where_you_want_to_look’, ‘what_column_you_want_to_know’)

Let’s put it in:

The first value, ‘Search_criterion’. Or, in this case ‘what we are looking for’. Or, ‘what value do you want to find in the 2nd table?’

We are looking for the ‘personal nr.’, so we select the first row from this column.

So now we have told VLOOKUP what to look for, we need to tell it WHERE to look. The second value (after adding a comma) is the ‘ARRAY’ value. An array is a ‘serie of cells’. So basicly just a ‘selection of more than 1 cell’.

We select the 2nd table for this. Because this is where want to look for our persoanl nr.


And finaly, we want to the column ‘Operation System’, whicht is the 2nd column, to show in C3.


Press enter and…


There’s only one problem, when we extend the formula down, we get an error…


This is because we Google docs drags the ENTIRE formula down, also the search array:


That’s no good. We have to use the ‘$’ sign to stop this from happening.
So we add a dollar sign ‘$’ to the ‘search criteria’:


Find out more about this ‘$’ here .


And we’re done!