How to inner-join in Excel (eg. using VLOOKUP)

How can I inner join two Excel spreadsheets using VLOOKUP?

In SQL, I would do it this way:

SELECT id, name
FROM Sheet1
INNER JOIN Sheet2
ON Sheet1.id = Sheet2.id;

Sheet1:

+----+------+
| ID | Name |
+----+------+
|  1 | A    |
|  2 | B    |
|  3 | C    |
|  4 | D    |
+----+------+

Sheet2:

+----+-----+
| ID | Age |
+----+-----+
|  1 |  20 |
|  2 |  21 |
|  4 |  22 |
+----+-----+

Result:

+----+------+
| ID | Name |
+----+------+
|  1 | A    |
|  2 | B    |
|  4 | D    |
+----+------+

What is a better way to do this besides VLOOKUP?

First lets get a list of values that exist in both tables. If you are using excel 2010 or later then in Sheet 3 A2 put the following formula:

=IFERROR(AGGREGATE(15,6,Sheet2!$A$1:$A$5000/(COUNTIF(Sheet1!$A$1:$A$5000,Sheet2!$A$1:$A$5000)>0),ROW(1:1)),"")

If you are using 2007 or earlier then use this array formula:

=IFERROR(SMALL(IF(COUNTIF(Sheet1!$A$1:$A$5000,Sheet2!$A$1:$A$5000),Sheet2!$A$1:$A$5000),ROW(1:1)),"")

Being an array formula, copy and paste into the formula bar then hit Ctrl-Shift-Enter instead of Enter or Tab to leave the edit mode.

Then copy down as many rows as desired. This will create a list of ID'd that are in both lists. This does assume that ID is a number and not text.

Then with that list we use vlookup:

=IF(A2<>"",VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet1!A:B,2,FALSE),"")

This will then return the value from Sheet 1 that matches.