USING THE VLOOKUP FUNCTION

[ELIZABETH OWENS]

Seems that this function is working fine for a list when the list consists of alpha numeric or all alpha characters. However when I have only a number in the list, the lookup function cannot make the connection between list a and list b.

For example:

72QM592M
82QM5379M
8083397
8083398
FOXU118138
123456777

This is the List A and List B would have these items in it with other data that I would want to pull into a spreadsheet with the lookup function. The data comes in fine for the entries with the Alpha-numeric entries but not with the numeric entries only.

Can anyone help with the question as to why the lookup function is not working for both?

 

[martinee]

Could you post the formula you are using? Have you implemented the -- before your ranges, so excel uses the most relevent cell format for the data it contains? HTH.

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

Welcome to the Board.

It's because the entries in your lookup table are text and the item to be looked up is a number (or vice versa).

You can quickly convert text entries that look like numbers to true numbers by selecting all the data, choosing Data|Text to Columns from the menu and clicking finish.

Or you can use a formula like this:

=VLOOKUP(TEXT(A1,"@"),$D$1:$E$4,2,FALSE)

 

[bluemonster]

Don't know why u can't get it to work, but I used those you had in list A and it worked fine.?????