How to VLOOKUP Importrange in Google Sheets

Last Updated on October 31, 2023 by Jake Sheridan

In this tutorial, you will learn how to vlookup importrange in Google Sheets.

How to VLOOKUP Importrange in Google Sheets

Google Sheets has a powerful function called VLOOKUP that allows you to search for a certain value in one table and return a corresponding value from another table. This is perfect for quickly pulling in data from one sheet to another, without having to manually enter it.

However, some users may not know that the VLOOKUP function can also be used in combination with the IMPORTRANGE function.

This allows you to look up a value in a completely different spreadsheet without having to import all the data into your current workbook.

In this guide, we will show you how to use VLOOKUP with IMPORTRANGE in Google Sheets.

How to Use IMPORTRANGE and VLOOKUP in Google Sheets

Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to use importrange and vlookup in Google Sheets.

Step 1

First, head to the spreadsheet with the data you want to import. Click on the Share button on the top-right of the screen.

Step 2

In the dialog box, click on Copy link. This button will add the URL of the current spreadsheet to your device’s clipboard.

Step 3

Head back to the main spreadsheet and select the cell you want to place the VLOOKUP function.

Step 4

Indicate the value you want to use as the lookup value.

Step 5

The second parameter of VLOOKUP will determine the lookup table range to use.

In this formula, instead of specifying a local range, we will instead generate a new range within our formula using the IMPORTRANGE function.

We’ll add the copied URL as a string for the first argument of the IMPORTRANGE function. We’ll then specify the specific sheet tab and range to import.

Step 6

Next, we’ll need to specify the index to return and the match type.

In this example, we want to return the fifth column of our IMPORTRANGE output. We set the last argument to FALSE to indicate we want an exact match.

Step 7

Hit the Enter key to evaluate the function. Your formula should now perform a VLOOKUP using data retrieved from the IMPORTRANGE function.

Step 8

We can now use the AutoFill feature to fill out the rest of our table.

Summary

This guide should be everything you need to learn how to vlookup importrange in Google Sheets.

You may make a copy of this example spreadsheet to test it out on your own.