VLOOKUP issue thats VERY strange

[bdosky]

I am trying to use VLOOKUP to take a name, look for that name in a table and output a sentence containing that name. As follows:

• Kelly | Waiting for approval from Kelly
• James | " " " " " James
• Chris | " " " " " Chris
• Michael | " " " " "Michael

Testing this out, Kelly output: Waiting for approval from James.

But everything else worked. James output " James. Experimenting, I changed the output for James to "there is an error here" and tried Kelly again, Kelly output "there is an error here".

Later, I switched up the names and replaced James with Benton. Kelly output Benton.

I opened a whole new spreadsheet and basically made the same thing, no copying or pasting either. Kelly actually outputs Kelly. However, on the new spreadsheet, I made a table of 6 names and wrote VLOOKUP accordingly. Both the names Benton and Chris returned Value not available errors and said #N/A.

I need this table to work with all of these names, and I have no clue what the issue is. Please help?!

 

[MrKowz]

Welcome to the forums!

What is the formula you are currently using?

 

[bdosky]

E6=VLOOKUP(E5, A1:B6, 2, 1)

this is on the new spreadsheet I told you about. My name list is as follows:
James, Kelly, Michael, Chris, Sam, Benton and associated outputs.

 

[MrKowz]

Change that last argument to a 0. That way it will return an exact match. Otherwise, your list must be sorted ascending.

VLOOKUP(E5, A1:B6, 2, 0)

 

[bdosky]

Thank you!!!!