Is your Easter Weekend covered by these 10?

A long weekend coming up and I bet there are a very limited number of ways in which we all spend it. I can think of ten:

1. Do nothing!
2. Get some jobs done around the house and garden;
3. Spend some rare time with the family;
4. Go away for a weekend break;
5. Visit friends;
6. Drink!
7. Eat!
8. Sleep;
9. Take work home;
10. Go into the office because you can't get any work done at home.

I am planning to do bits of 1,3,5,6,7 and 8. I will desperately try to avoid 2, 9 and 10.

I'd love to hear of anybody whose plans are not covered above. Please share below.

New look and feel - What do you think?

Regular visitors will notice a significant change to the look and feel of the blog - hopefully it looks more professional, that was the intention.

Please comment with your thoughts.

Spreadsheets by email

Those of you who read the Not Just Numbers ezine will be aware that Feechan Consulting has just launched the new Spreadsheets by Email service.

This service allows you to tap into Feechan Consulting's Excel expertise from a distance. Simply enter the details of any standalone spreadsheet you want developed (from anywhere in the world) and you will be provided with a fixed competitive quote. Should you wish to go ahead, simply pay by credit card and the spreadsheet will be emailed to you within the agreed timescales.

The service is already receiving a positive response from other blogs, see The Excel wizard has a new spellbook on Emily Coltman's blog.

Why not give it a try?

Excel Tip: Using VLOOKUP

Second only to pivot tables, the VLOOKUP formula is the one of the features of Excel that I am most often asked about. It is also one of the most useful.

Simply put, this formula allows you to look up an item from a list.

Its format is as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value,range to lookup,column to return,TRUE or FALSE)

lookup value: This is the value you wish to search the first column of your table for (this can be the actual value, but it can be very powerful to refer to a cell containing the value).

range to lookup: This is the range (either named, or referred to directly) that contains the lookup table. It is useful to refer to whole columns as this allows your list to grow.

column to return: This is given as a number, where the first column (the one being searched) is 1.

TRUE or FALSE: This is a rather odd one. If you enter 'TRUE' or omit this argument, Excel will go to the closest value if the actual value being looked up is not there. This requires the first column to be sorted in ascending order. I can think of very few applications for this other than some form of conversion table, but as conversion tables are normally to help approximate a formula, there is not a lot of call for them in Excel where you can easily calculate the actual formula itself. For most financial applications you will need to enter 'FALSE' here as this will return an #NA error if it cannot find the lookup value.

The VLOOKUP formula is very useful for adding additional data to raw imported data in Excel. For one application, see my article on automating management accounts.