Excel copy and paste selective columns

Question

I have a long list of employee data, but for specific employee codes, listed in A, which I want to type in myself, I want to copy and paste specific information into a new spreadsheet/excel file faster, such as the name, hire date, termination, type of employment, etc.

All employee codes are in column A1:A2500, and I want to copy only columns B:D,N,R for specific employee codes and the columns go all the way across to Y.

Is there a formula(s) for easier copy and pasting? I've been doing it the old fashion way of going back and forth between different Excel files, finding the employees code and individually copy pasting the columns I need.

Answer 1

Probably the best way to do this is to treat the sheet you have now as a "database" tab and then set up a separate "output" tab using lookup functions.

For example, this formula looks for a record that has the same employee number and pulls whatever you have in column B:

=VLOOKUP([the cell in the output sheet where you've put an employee number], database!$A$1:$Y$2500, 2, FALSE)

You can get similar results for other columns by using the same formula, but changing the number in the third term from "2" to whatever the index number of the desired column is.

Your "database" sheet has to be sorted by employee number for this to work properly. (Note that if you add new employees over time, it's easy for things to get broken because of this.)