application extracts

[porter2059]

sometimes I extract a list of a soft ware application where lets say column a is an account number and column b is an account description. sometimes when I use this extract data as a table array in a vlookup formula it won't pull the data and I get a result of #N/A. when I look the lookup value is in the table array and it is exact but it wont pull. if I then go into each cell in the first column of the table array by hitting F2 and then enter it does something to the format so now it recognized the look up value in the table array and pulls the data. Its fine when it a short list but when the table array is 3000 lines long it takes a long time to go into each cell. is there a better way or can someone explain what's going on and what to do about it? Thanks for your help.

 

[StephenCrump]

This sounds like a numeric vs text problem, e.g. your VLOOKUP is using a numeric account number 123456, but the data imported from the software app has a text value '123456.

If that is the problem, there are a few different ways to convert text to numeric. One quick way is to select the entire column(s) of offending data, and use the keyboard shortcut ALT+D,E,F (for a Data/Text To Columns conversion)