Nested VLOOKUP – Excel & Google Sheets

Written by

Editorial Team

Reviewed by

Steve Rynearson

Last updated on February 8, 2023
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This tutorial will demonstrate how to perform a Nested VLOOKUP in Excel and Google Sheets. If you have access to the XLOOKUP Function, we recommend performing a nested XLOOKUP instead.

Nested VLOOKUP Main

If you need to perform a lookup that is dependent on looking up another value, you can use a Nested VLOOKUP formula:

=VLOOKUP(VLOOKUP(E3,B3:C5,2,FALSE),B8:C10,2,FALSE)

Nested VLOOKUP Pic01

 

Let’s walkthrough the formula:

First, we need to perform the 1st VLOOKUP to extract the required lookup value (e.g., Product ID) for our main VLOOKUP:

=VLOOKUP(E3,B3:C5,2,FALSE)

Nested VLOOKUP Pic02

 

Note: The VLOOKUP Function performs a vertical lookup in the first column of the table array starting from the top of the list going down (i.e., top-down). If it finds a match, it returns the corresponding value from the column described by the column index, and if not, it returns an error.

Next, we substitute the result to our main VLOOKUP and perform a lookup in another table:

=VLOOKUP(F3,B8:C10,2,FALSE)

Nested VLOOKUP Pic03

 

Combining all of these results to our original formula:

=VLOOKUP(VLOOKUP(E3,B3:C5,2,FALSE),B8:C10,2,FALSE)

 

Nested VLOOKUP in Google Sheets

The formula works the same way in Google Sheets:

Nested VLOOKUP GSheet

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