Ever need to look up data in one Google sheet and use that to populate a different Google sheet? It’s pretty easy to do, but you need to use the VLOOKUP function and the IMPORTRANGE function and it takes 2 steps:
For those who don’t want to watch a video on it, here’s the step by step process:
- Open both Google Sheets in 2 separate tabs or 2 windows if you’ve got the display space. One of them will be your source sheet and one will be your destination sheet.
- Link the spreadsheets together with the =IMPORTRANGE() function. For the “Spreadsheet_URL” variable, use the identification string for the source sheet. That’s the long alphanumeric string in the source sheet URL.
- Here’s the syntax: =IMPORTRANGE(“unique sheet identification”,”tab name!range”). Make sure that you don’t have any typos in the tab name, that you use the ! between the tab and the range and when typing the range have a : between the start cell and the end cell. Refer to the video or the graphic for a visual walkthrough. It will help you to copy the IMPORTRANGE formula into a notes application or somewhere out of the way on your sheet.
- The formula will return REF# in the cell, but if you hover or click the cell, you’ll be prompted to allow the destination sheet to access the source sheet. Once you allow access, the entire range will be copied into the destination sheet. You can delete all of the data since the 2 sheets are now linked.
- In the destination sheet, use the VLOOKUP formula as you normally would, however for the range variable you will use the entire IMPORTRANGE formula for that argument. Remember to use the $ in the source range to keep the range fixed if you’re going to be copying the formula to other cells.
I hope you’ve found this helpful!