From the course: Excel: Power Query (Get & Transform) (2020)

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Outer join versus VLOOKUP

Outer join versus VLOOKUP

From the course: Excel: Power Query (Get & Transform) (2020)

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Outer join versus VLOOKUP

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- [Instructor] An outer join in Power Query is often described as being similar to a VLOOKUP and a lot of times it is. But this video is going to discuss one situation where an outer join would be better than a VLOOKUP. We've got two datasets. On the left side we see our car park assignments and then on the right side we've got owner, unit, bedroom, and storage unit assignments. You and I are concerned about the car parks and we want to bring the units over next to the car parks. That means we want to see next to Angelo's name the B-4. Now let's see what VLOOKUP would do. Let's go here. Unit equals VLOOKUP. Look up Angelo comma, where do we want to look for Angelo? We're going to look in this range, comma, want to bring back the second column, comma, and we want an exact match, false. Close parentheses, enter. Now notice what VLOOKUP did with Gail. We see Gail owns two units, B-2 and C-2. But VLOOKUP only retrieved B-2…

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