Help a rookie make a dropdown that populates a sheet.

Hi
and were do those statistics come from?

See if this example and explanation help:DropDownHelp.sol1.xlsx

Hope this helps

Correction, I am an idiot, for I cannot get this to work when I try to do it on my own. It keeps telling me I don't have the right number of values. Or the ever helpful error message #N/A. Totally awesome, that. Really helps me figure out what the hell is going on.

My Formula: =IF($E33="","",VLOOKUP(Sheet1!F32,Sheet2!I2:J60,MATCH($E33,Sheet2!I2:J60,0),FALSE)) that breaks


Previous formula that doesn't:

=IF($G11="","",VLOOKUP(I$10,$A$2:$E$5,MATCH($G11,$A$1:$E$1,0),FALSE))

I understand the first one (G11) That's the value that tells it what to read from.
I$10, I have no idea. the rest are equally confusing. Why isn't the format "Read value from this field, pick a corresponding value between one field and another?"

The I$10 SHOULD be looking at the column headers of your output table to match up with the data table, if you look at the example, the column headers where the output goes EXACTLY match the Row headers for the data table...this makes the lookups and matches work sooo much easier... when the lookups have to calculate offsets and rows and substitutes,etc..., things start getting complicated, and FAR easier to break...

If you upload a sample of what you got, I'll take a look and see what the problem is (See signature, and no screenshots please )

Hope this helps

okay...I won't download from dropbox...just a thing I guess..and don't be embarrassed about table top games, I am a "D&D" man myself
VLOOKUP goes like this:
VLOOKUP(what you are looking for,the (min 2 column) table you are searching, which column the results come from, [OPTIONAL] {true or false (true finds exact or next lowest match;false only returns EXACT matches)})
you HAVE to remember, VLOOKUP searches the FIRST column of the table, and returns values FROM THE COLUMN specified (which can be the first column), but... you MUST specify at least 2 columns for the table..

Hope that helps

EDIT-
I forgot to specify--TRUE option requires the first column of the table to be sorted in ascending order..sorry about that

Sorry if there's something wrong with dropbox... o.O

When you say 'what you're looking for.' How do I know what to put there? x.x

And testing to see if I can get the thing to stick in here. I'm going to let it lock up my browser and just sit, I guess.

=IF($E33="","",VLOOKUP(Sheet2!J2,Sheet2!I2:J60,MATCH($E33,Sheet2!J2:J60,0),FALSE)) in cell F33 is supposed to return the page number from one of the many tables in sheet 2. I can't see anything that's wrong, but I still get that utterly useless error message: #n/a. Whatever that means.

Okay, before I look at the sheet, #N/A means the VLOOKUP could not find a matching value..check for leading/trailing spaces, unprintable characters...extra spaces..etc...using the false option means the lookup value and the value in the table have to match EXACTLY...these are things to check first (and same for the match with last argument as '0'...needs to match EXACTLY)

Also, if you goto the formulas tab on the ribbon menu, and use the evaluate formula tool to see what a formula is doing, you can usually find where the errors are occuring, I use this for almost every question I answer on the forum

I have no problem checking, these are just some hints on how to find the problems for your self

Also...I see NO expected results or logic to get expected results on your sample.. So I am not sure what exactly you need here

EDIT-
I can see you would like this as a template , but need some values to work with to create the formulas..

Okay, pardon my stupidity here, but. What do you mean by 'no expected results or logic to get...?" I copied and edited your example...

I guess I'm totally misunderstanding how this works. x.x What SHOULD I be doing.

What I mean is- with a GIVEN set of data, the results SHOULD look like this..(expected results for data given), the REASON it should look like this is because ....(logic to create the expected results on given data (ie--the rules that give the result.."IF vitality is this or lower THEN hp= base -2,..etc..))

I am not sure how much clearer I can make it...I haven't found a single formula in the first sheet that relates to the discussion so far, so I have NO idea of where the trouble is...

As to dropbox, it's not a problem, I haven't heard of any problems, I just won't download from a site I know nothing about, especially when the forum has it's own uploading tools..

I hope that explaned it better :?

use:
=IFERROR(your formula,"")

well, I certainly would
Glad you got things running

I'm using 2007, and I cant find them either, where are they located? maybe I can get them to show..