VLOOKUP on DropDown Multiselect

Arianna Pulidori

Hi All,

Does anyone know if there is a way to use VLookup with values selected from a DropDown with multiple selection?

This is my example:

I have a grid with all contacts dived by studios.

I use a Vlookup formula in another grid for orders where though a Form people choose where to send the order.

My problem comes up once the order goes to multiple studios and instead of receive the emails for both (ie aaa@aaa.com, bbb@bbb.com), I get an error (No Match).

Any suggestion to avoid this issue?

Thanks

Arianna

Mike Wilday

A screenshot of what you're addressing would be very helpful in understanding your request. Could you share something with the sensitive data censored?

Arianna Pulidori

Hi Mike,

this is the grid where I search with the lookup (Pic1), it works well until I chose multiple studios from the dropdown (Pic2). This is my formula =VLOOKUP(Studio13, {Contacts List Range 1}, 2, false)

I hope that is more clear now. Thanks for your help!

Pic1

Pic2.

Arianna Pulidori

following up on this request, any help?

Mike Wilday

Sorry, for the delay. There are a couple of challenges that we've discovered when using formulas. We haven't been able to use a formula to pull in multiple contacts in any measure. @Paul Newcome @Andrée Starå Have either of you been able to use a formula to grab multiple contacts into a cell in a contact column?

Paul Newcome

@Mike Wilday I haven't yet unfortunately, but it would certainly be great.

@Arianna Pulidori What is the maximum number of studios could it be sent to all at once? I have an idea that I need to test out, but if it is not too many (and you don't have a ton of studios to begin with), I might be able to get something to work (🤞).

Paul Newcome

@Arianna Pulidori

So a possible solution (depending on how many studios you have and how many different combinations you could have) would be to also list out those combinations in your reference table.

If the multiple contacts are already in the same cell that you are pulling from, the multiple contacts will be pulled to the new cell.

The only catch is... That could add up to a lot of combinations really quickly.

Arianna Pulidori

Unfortunately I have more than 100 studios and the combination can be whatever we pick at the time of the project.

Also that list is growing so the combinations are really too many! I guess that for the moment I still need to do that part manually.

Paul Newcome

Oy!!! Yeah. Unfortunately the only solution I can think of (above) doesn't scale very well.

In the mean time... Feel free to Submit a Product Enhancement Request to allow formulas to populate multiple contacts per cell.

Mike Wilday

How many studios max would be used at one time?

I could imagine using separate columns to choose the studios and then do a vlookup for each one into a contact column for studio choice 1, studio choice 2, studio choice 3. etc.

Then for your automation process try referencing all three of those columns.

Would that work for you?

Paul Newcome

@Mike Wilday I thought about that too, but when you set an automation to send, you can only send to one contact column. You would have to duplicate the automation x number of times one for each column.

If it is only a few then that wouldn't be too bad, but if there are quite a few... Ugh. Especially if you need to go in and make a slight change to the automation then have to go back into every one of them and make the same update and hope you don't miss one.

Mike Wilday

@Paul Newcome good point! Yes, updating and modifying the automations would be a nightmare. But if you're looking at a smaller number of total possible studios then I think this might work.

Arianna Pulidori

We can use up to 30 studios at each time so they will be many columns, also I'm using automation process to send out many info.

Paul Newcome

@Arianna Pulidori Wow! yeah. I would stick with manual entry at this point (unfortunately). Sorry I couldn't think of something. I am going to bookmark this thread in case I do think of something else or we finally discover how to formumatically (if that isn't a word, it should be LOL) pull multiple contacts into a single cell.

Arianna Pulidori

Thank you @Paul Newcome ! I like the word formumatically and I'll submit a Submit a Product Enhancement Request :)

Paul Newcome

Happy to help! 👍️