Why doesn't VLOOKUP work in Excel 2007?

Question

excel

Good afternoon.
There is a table .
On the first sheet: titles and inv. numbers. And the column in which the title is merged with inv. number for the tradition of uniqueness.
On the second sheet: lists by hotel numbers: room number, name and quantity.
On the second sheet, the name is selected from the drop-down list from the first sheet and the quantity is entered. In this case, it is necessary that the inventory number is displayed next to it in a column.
I use the VLOOKUP function: in the first table I look for the name selected from the drop-down list in the second table and display the value corresponding to it from the column with inv. numbers.
Does not work.
Works approximately with a value of "True", but it produces any numbers. If "False", then figurines.
Moreover, even if I copy the value obtained from the list on the second sheet, I will not find it by searching on the first one from which it was taken!

Answer 1

VLOOKUP searches from left to right.
In your example, the pivot table is searched for columns A:C and the second column is taken. Accordingly, the search goes through column A of the pivot table, not C. As options: on the sheet of the pivot table, in after column C, in column D, duplicate inventory numbers and in forward use the range "pivot_table C: D. or in column A , set unique values ​​from C.

Answer 2

A common mistake when using VLOOKUP is a different data format. For example, in one table, the number is stored as a number, and in another table, the number is stored as text.