Excel: Multiple Vlookups to pull in 1 data element - excel

Question

I have 2 separate sheets in Excel. On sheet 1, I am using the following if statement in column C (hours) to pull in a number in column D (hours) from sheet 2.
=IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet2!A:D,1,FALSE)),"N/A",VLOOKUP(B2,Sheet2!A:D,4,FALSE))
The first vlookup is validating the project number on the second sheet, then the second vlookup is validating the team name and pulling in the hours from the second sheet.
The problem is that when I copy the formula down the column, the hours value repeats for the same team name. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Sheet 1
columns
Proj_Number Team Name Hours
123456 R&D 26
123456 Dev 50
123456 QA 10
777777 R&D 26
Sheet 2
Proj_Number Team Name Organization Hours
777777 R&D AUTO 26
123456 DEV AUTO 50
123456 QA AUTO 10
123456 R&D AUTO 20

Answer 1

You are asking VLOOKUP to do something that it cannot do. The second VLOOKUP in your IF formula:
VLOOKUP(B2,Sheet2!A:D,4,FALSE)
is being asked to return the first instance of 'Team Name' that it finds on sheet 2; which it is doing.
If you want to return the number of hours based on the 'Team Name' and 'Proj_Number', you need to do it a bit differently.
One way is to create another column on Sheet2, maybe called 'Proj_plus_Team', (inserted at column C location) that concatenates the values in 'Proj_Number' and 'Team Name'. Then you can search on this new column using the following formula:
VLOOKUP(A2 & B2,Sheet2!C:E,3,FALSE)
Also, when doing this, make sure that the data on Sheet2 is sorted alphabetically on the values in column 'Proj_plus_Team'. VLOOKUP requires that the search column be sorted alphabetically or inaccurate results may be returned.

Answer 2

Option 1 - using formulas
LOOKUP is designed to retrieve a single value, which is what it's doing. It loops through a data range, checking whether the value is bigger/smaller than the reference value, and retrieves the first transition point. In your case, it finds the first match and stops, not what you're after at all.
If you want to do this using formulas, you'll probably find SUMIF() and the newly added in 2007 SUMIFS() to be a much cleaner route. Also, side-note, in Excel 2007 Tables are your new best friend, they tidy the formulas for this kind of thing right up and look after things like expanding ranges.
Your example above, using tables, would be translated to:
=SUMIF(Table2[Team],Table1[[#This Row],[Team]],Table2[Hours])
where Table1 is the equivalent of your Sheet1, and Table2 maps to Sheet2
Of course the reason that this won't provide what you're after is that this is summarising by team only, whereas you want to apply 2 filters, so you'd move to SUMIFS() and end up with:
=SUMIFS(Table2[Hours],Table2[Proj_Number],Table1[[#This Row],[Proj_Number]],Table2[Team],Table1[[#This Row],[Team]])
The benefit is that your formula will always recalculate automatically, the downside is that you have to manually update your Table1.
Option 2 - pivot tables
Insert --> Pivot table will create your pivot table, set the range as appropriate.
Then drag Project Number into Row labels, drag Team name below it also in Row labels, and drag Hours into the Values box.
That'll give you a breakdown by project by team of how many hours. You can then mess around with the options to get it exactly how you want, by doing things like turning off the level 1 summaries. Those kind of options are best found by experimentation, they live in the PivotTable Design tab. The catch is the need to manually refresh the pivot table, the benefit is that when you add new projects they'll be taken care of easily.