cross referencing in excel

Question

Hello,

I need help with cross referencing in Excel. I have 2 spreadsheets in different workbooks that I need to cross reference. 

Basically, I have old data (report 1) that is correct and I need to make sure that the new data (report 2) is partly replaced with the old data from report 1. In report 1 column "B" I have the Item Code and in column "H" I have the client. Report 2 has the item code and the client in a different cell location, we could say column D and F

Every month I get new and old codes. Sometimes the old codes identify the wrong client. I need to find the codes in report 2 that are the same as report 1 and then I want excel to tell me if the client is the same. I really don't know how to do this and right now I am doing it manually. It takes me hours as I have thousands of codes. Can someone please explain in simple steps, as I am a beginner, how I could do this?

Your help is appreciated. Thank you,

Iris

Answer 1

Hi,

You can refer to the steps given below and check if it helps.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Lookup-and-reference-functions-reference-8aa21a3a-b56a-4055-8257-3ec89df2b23e

Launch Microsoft Excel and open the spreadsheet that is going to display information contained in other files.

Open each of the other files that has information you want to reference in the display spreadsheet.

Switch back to the display spreadsheet and click once in the cell that is going to display information from another spreadsheet.

Press the "Equal" ("=") key on the keyboard and immediately switch to the spreadsheet that contains the first piece of information that needs to be displayed.

Click the cell that contains the information that will be displayed in the display spreadsheet and press "Enter." The display spreadsheet now contains a reference to the information contained in the other spreadsheet, and this information will automatically update when changes are made to the data.

Let us know if you need more help.

Answer 2

Yes, thank you for the link. I used Vlookup.