Help! - Auto Populating

[PunkyP7]

Hey everyone.

Okay so I have a speadsheet with 8 columns which are:

A - Name of Customer
B - Date of Sale
C - Month of Sale
D - Cost
E - Sell
F - Margin
G - Profit
H - Description

I want to auto populate Column H when I type in the name of the customer in Column A.

In Description I have a list of all items they order so when I put there name in I want it to auto populate column H with that list.

What is the best way to do this?

Thanks in advance

 

[andy616]

Hey everyone.

Okay so I have a speadsheet with 8 columns which are:

A - Name of Customer
B - Date of Sale
C - Month of Sale
D - Cost
E - Sell
F - Margin
G - Profit
H - Description

I want to auto populate Column H when I type in the name of the customer in Column A.

In Description I have a list of all items they order so when I put there name in I want it to auto populate column H with that list.

What is the best way to do this?

Thanks in advance

Do you want just a full list of what they order (bread and milk and eggs) or a drop down list to choose from (bread or milk or eggs)?

 

[PunkyP7]

Do you want just a full list of what they order (bread and milk and eggs) or a drop down list to choose from (bread or milk or eggs)?

In Column H, it is just free text of what they order, no dropdowns or anything just a list of stuff separated by comma's if that makes sense?

 

[andy616]

In Column H, it is just free text of what they order, no dropdowns or anything just a list of stuff separated by comma's if that makes sense?

Ok, this is how I would do it, but there may be more clever ways...

You need a master list of 2 columns. One header being the customer and the other header being the description of whatever you want it to return. Kind of like this:
[TABLE="width: 500"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD]Customer[/TD]
[TD]Description[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dave[/TD]
[TD]Bread, Milk, Eggs[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]John[/TD]
[TD]Bread, Milk[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]


Then put a vlookup formula into your main sheet that will look against this master table. Something like this:

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(I8,$N$8:$O$9,2,0),"-")

I'm not too sure how familiar you are with the VLOOKUP function, so say if the formula doesn't make any sense. But this formula will basically return the description you put into the master table when the Customer's name is entered. If there is no Customer or a Customer that is not in your master list it will return a value of "-"