How to VLOOKUP in Smartsheet (Including Another Sheet)

Write a VLOOKUP against another sheet

Say each row has an Order ID and you want to pull that order's price from a separate Products sheet:

1. Click the cell that should hold the result and start typing =VLOOKUP(.
2. For the search value, use the current row's key: [Order ID]@row.
3. When you reach the lookup table argument, click Reference Another Sheet in the formula help card, open the source sheet, and select the columns of the lookup table (key column leftmost).
4. Finish the formula: =VLOOKUP([Order ID]@row, {Products Range 1}, 3, false) — the 3 means "return the third column of the selected range", and false forces an exact match.
5. Press Enter, then drag-fill down or convert it to a column formula so every row looks itself up.

Why INDEX/MATCH usually wins

VLOOKUP finds the key in the leftmost column of the range and counts columns to the right — so if anyone inserts or reorders a column in the source sheet, your 3 now points at the wrong data. The INDEX/MATCH pair references each column explicitly and survives restructuring:

=INDEX({Products Price}, MATCH([Order ID]@row, {Products Order ID}, 0))

Two single-column references instead of one wide table range also helps with limits: Smartsheet caps how many cross-sheet references a sheet can hold and how many cells they may pull in, and whole-table VLOOKUP ranges burn through that allowance fast. On large sheets, thousands of lookup formulas also slow saving and loading noticeably.

Look it up without formulas at all

If the goal is simply "get the matching values into the sheet", a formula that re-evaluates forever may be more machinery than the job needs. Our Cross-Sheet Lookup tool matches rows on a key column and writes the values directly into the target sheet — no cross-sheet references to hit limits on, no formulas to break when columns move, and you re-run it whenever the source data changes. Every run shows a preview before anything is written.

Frequently asked questions