Thanks very much that worked a treat. Any how just on the same note and for my further understanding I had * in most of my codes but in particular I had a problem with the above as mentioned. When adding a 0 ie FF*0219 it worked also. Also when FF*219 was before FF*1219 in the column being looked up it worked. FF*2219 also worked correctly. I accept the * as a wild card entry but fail to understand why excel got stuck on this particular code. Does a Vlookup look down a column list when computing the Vlookup? It must be due to the above working when FF*219 was before FF*1219 in my list. Appreciate your help. Cheers