Product coding in Excel is a great way to control inventory; learn how to use the formula in your worksheet to help you manage items
Using an Excel spreadsheet to create and find product codes is an excellent option for anyone who needs to control inventory. This allows for efficient data management, as the system allows each item to be identified and traced easily and accurately.
What is the CODE function?
The CODE function in Microsoft Excel returns a numeric code corresponding to the first character of a text. This way you can get the value that represents a character set chosen by your computer.
The basic syntax of the CODE function is as follows:
- =CODE(text), where text is the code for the first character you want to get.
For example, if you want to know the numerical code of the “!” character, you can use the formula =CODE(“!”) and get the value 33, which represents the ASCII code corresponding to the character.
What is the VLOOKUP function?
Now, when generating codes in an Excel spreadsheet for products, you can ease the task of finding the description of the items with the VLOOKUP formula. It allows you to search for a specific value in one column and return a matching value in another adjacent column in the same row.
The basic syntax of the VLOOKUP formula is:
- =VLOOKUP(What do you want to look for, where do you want to look for, the column number in the range that contains the value to return, returns an approximate or exact match – denoted as 1/TRUE or 0/FALSE).
How to find the codes in an inventory sheet
- Open the Excel spreadsheet;
- Select cells A1 to D1;
- On the “Home” tab, click “Format as table”;
- Choose a table format;
- In cell A1 through D1, in each cell type in the following order:
- Code, Description, Amount, Value.
- Fill in the table with the data corresponding to your product inventory;
- In the code column, enter the formula =CODE(text). In “text”, enter the product name to generate a code;
- Create a table to identify the product by code as below screenshot shown;
- Under “Description”, enter the formula: =VLOOKUP(A10,A2:D4,2,0);
- Press the “Enter” key;
- Look for the code on the side to view the exact description of the product in the table.



When you add products to your spreadsheet, it’s common to see repeated information. To solve this problem, learn how to delete duplicate data in excel.
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