Copy data between excel spreadsheets with a given value as a parameter - excel

Question

Say I have two spreadsheets.
One of the spreadsheets has a table like this:
**Sheet 1**
A B C D
1 Name Age Rank Number
2 George 22 Master 12
3 Paul 21 Acolyte 22
4 Jimmy 32 Horse 33
5 Agnor 12 Cheetah 90
The other spreadsheet looks like this:
**Sheet 2**
A B C D
1 Name Age Rank Number
2 George
3 Paul 21 22
4 Agnor
I want to copy Ages from sheet 1 to sheet 2. So I would copy George, Paul, and Agnor's age, and ignore Jimmy. Which function should I use to copy data based on an existing value?
Is there something like:
foreach VAL in Sheet1
if(Sheet1.Name.EqualsIgnoreCase(Sheet2.Name))
{
Sheet2.Age = Sheet1.Age;
}
I looked this up, and a lot of people are saying to use VLookup, but I can't figure out how that would apply.
EDIT
I found a similar resolved question (No idea HOW I missed it) here: Compare and copy data between worksheets
However, I'm still a little shaky on how to implement this (I'm using Excel 2007).

Answer 1

vlookup would be the easiest way to go.
I will use cell B2 in sheet2 as the reference to try to explain the function
=VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet1!$A$2:$D$5,2,FALSE)
The first parameter is the data you are using for a lookup - you may want to change that to $A2 if you copy the formula around the sheet
The second parameter is where the data is that excel needs to find the value you referenced in the first parameter - use dollar signs. The data doesn't tend to move
The third parameter tells excel what info to return - the 2 means give me the 2nd piece of data
The last parameter tells excel if it can use a close match (FALSE for an exact match)
Now to follow Excel and see what it returns.....
First, it looks for George in the data (it knows it has to be an exact match from the fourth parameter)
Next, it finds the row George -- 22 -- Master -- 12 and gives the function the second value (22 in this case)