Using vlookup in Excel to match a Surname and First name and output unique ref number?

Question

I have a spreadsheet which has 3 columns

Col A is a unique reference number Col B is the surname Col C is the firstname

In another worksheet I want to be able to type in a surname in cell A2, a firstname in cell A3 and have cell A1 automatically populated with the unique reference number.

Is this possible in Excel and if so could you give me an example of how to do it?

Thanks,

Greg

Answer 1

Most straightforward way would be to combine the two names in another column like so: =upper(B1)&" "&upper(C1). Then you can do a vlookup on those values to get the unique ref #.