OJ,
I have tried adding .value. That did not work either.
This section of code was modeled after another section that does work. The
only difference is I don't think it involved numbers, but text.

"OJ" wrote:

Hi Jonah,
try ...
If item = Cells(u + 1, "aa").Value

I think Cells(u+1,"aa") returns a range object..From Help...

Using this property without an object qualifier returns a Range object
that represents all the cells on the active worksheet.

Hth,
OJ