V-lookups & pivot tables

Hi Priti,

My immediate take on this one is 'come back to an Advanced Excel course' as we cover both topics in some detail!!!

However...

Pivot tables are used to summarise large databases. Start by clicking on a single cell somewhere in your data and then go to the Insert tab and Pivot Table on the furthest left. Let the pivot table go on a new sheet. A pane should appear on the right hand side of your new sheet, with the column titles listed at the top. Drag one of your label fields (e.g. Category from today) down to where it says row labels and a numeric field down to where it says values and you will instantly get your totals.

Vlookups are used to pull information from one place (usually a database) to another. There are 4 parts to it split up by commas. Suppose you have an invoice number in cell A1. The format is =VLOOKUP(A1,sourcedatarange, colno, False)
This will look at the number in A1, check your database (correct cell references to be used!) for a match and pull in the detail from column 2 of the database. The FALSE looks for a perfect match of invoice number.

For more information try this link
http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/excelfunctions/ss/90320vlookup.htm
But do come back on the advanced course...

Clare