Excel Problem

[FrogPad]

Lets say I have the following spreadsheet.


A B C D E
1 Ingredient Calories Protein Recipe Calories
2 Banana 100 1 =A2 ?



Now what I want to do is lets say I click on cell D2 and type "=A2" (without quotes of course). What happens is that D2 would then equal "Banana". How could I automatically make E2 fill in the appropriate amount of calories for banana?

I hope the way I worded this question makes sense.

[Anttech]

hmmmmm.... "=B2" but why would you want to have the same value twice??

[rcgldr]

You probably want to use the VLOOKUP function. This function searches for a match (exact or range compare) in one column, then returns a value correspoding to the same row in another column.

[FrogPad]

hmmmmm.... "=B2" but why would you want to have the same value twice??

I want it to be automated.

I want a "database" of different grocery items with some stats attached to them. For example,


Item Calories Protein Carbohydrates Fat
Soy Milk 100 6 9 3
Banana 110 1 32 0
Chicken 120 24 0 0


Then I want another "database" of recipes. Each recipe will consist of items taken from the grocery list. So, for example if I wanted to create a recipe item such as a banana shake I would just click under recipe, and then in the items list I would add the items by typing =XX where XX is the cell that I clicked on with the recipe name.


Recipe Calories Protein Carbohydrates Fat
Banana Shake

Soy Milk 100 6 9 3
Soy Milk 100 6 9 3
Banana 110 1 32 0

Total 310 13 50 6


I'm doing it this way because I don't have the time to put together a "real" program to do this. Hopefully this will suite my needs. It's going to be dirty, but oh well :)


You probably want to use the VLOOKUP function. This function searches for a match (exact or range compare) in one column, then returns a value correspoding to the same row in another column.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

That's exactly what I wanted. Mercy.