But the majority of users complain that vlookup is not working correctly or giving incorrect results. I don't understand why it says that the date is not found. Lookup Values To Left In Excel Using The Index Match Function Excel Excel Formula Index Finally, here is the comparison of vlookup formula in excel and google sheets when the search key is not in the first column. Vlookup not working in google sheets . If the values for the search_key argument are in the second or some other column, vlookup won't work and will return the #n/a error: The function is not returning correct values for all of the names. Because this is entered as an index number, it is not very durable. How does the vlookup to the left formula work? When i used references to numbers it would work. These are the 2 sheets referred to in the formula. =vlookup ( search_key, range, index, [is_sorted]) note: The first step is to use an array literal formula to create a new table on the fly, ...