Retrieving cell values from another sheet in the same excel workbook

Question

How do I go about using a custom excel formula in sheet2 to search on a given lastname eg. "Doe" from another sheet ("sheet1") and return a cell value (RC) in another excell sheet ("sheet2")

I've modeled a small picture of what I am trying to accomplish below.

Answer 1

You want to use the VLOOKUP function

First argument is the value you are looking up.
Second argument is the entire table you want to include. The column you are searching in MUST be the left-most column in that range.
The third value is the column index, in the second argument, that you want to return.
Fourth value specifies whether you want it to do an approximate match or not. So:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet1!A:C,3,FALSE)

Searches for an exact match for the value in A2, in the leftmost column of columns A through C in Sheet 1 and returns the corresponding value in the the third column of columns A through C in Sheet 1.