Hello,
How can I ask Excel to search a database to display data from a particular cell based on information entered in a separate cell? Here is an example: Suppose that I have a list of couples' names in Col F with the format, "Last, Him & Her", and Col G contains the corresponding phone numbers for each couple. Now, suppose that I want to enter the name of a male spouse in Cell B4 in the form "Last, Him" and have a formula in Cell C4 search the list and display the corresponding phone number for the entered male spouse (i.e. I don't want to have to enter both spouses or have it be an exact match but just contain the entered information). How would that formula be written?
Thanks, Steve
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one option would be to make your own function. Enter this into a module in VBA:
Public Function FindNum(ByVal str As String, ByRef rng As Range) As String
Dim c As Object
For Each c In rng.Cells
If InStr(c.Value, str) > 0 Then
FindNum = Cells(c.Row, c.Column + 1).Value
Exit Function
End If
Next c
If str = "" Then FindNum = ""
End Function
And then call the function in C4 like this:
=FindNum(B4,F:F)
Instead of using a macro (function) for this you can also use the VLOOKUP function using a wildcard.
as example it would be based on your example data:
=VLOOKUP(B4&"*",F4:G12,2,0
Here you see that it takes the value from B4 and search in F4:G12 and returns the value of the second column if there is a match.
The last zero in the formula is to enable you to search in unsorted data.
After the B4 value I added the wildcard.
If you want to be able to search more dynamically you also might add a wildcard in front of the B4 value, like: =VLOOKUP("*"&B4&"*",F4:G12
I hope this works for you
regards,
Jeroen
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: PsychotecPosted on 2008-10-16 at 01:09:40ID: 22728803
I completely understand your question but could you please post an example so I can work this out for you. I would do a search based on INSTR function in vba. Otherwise you would get something like a VLOOKUP function but im not sure this will be good enough in this case. Are dont you want to use vba?