Originally Posted by caverchik

Hello,
I have a unique VLOOKUP question that I haven't been able to solve with other googling.
I have a list that I need to lookup the relevant model names for. The list is both numeric, and alphanumeric. I converted to text, and then sorted so that, for example, 12B1 appeared after 1200, however, I can't get the VLOOKUP to lookup the 12B1 correctly.
To further complicate matters, I want it to only look up by the first four digits in the list.
If I use the formula: =VLOOKUP(--LEFT(A302,4),ModelName!A$2:D$2001,3,FALSE), it will look up the numerics just fine, but not the alphanumerics.
I created a second column to convert the 5 digits to 4, and then did a VLOOKUP on that one for the alphanumeric using this formula: =VLOOKUP(TEXT(B306,"@"),ModelName!A$2:D$2001,3,FAL SE) and that worked.
Problem is, each formula won't work on the opposite data type.
So, I have a few options. If I can get both of the formulas to only look up using the first four digits, that would be great. If I have to, I can convert the whole column to 4 digits, and do a VLOOKUP on that, but if possible I'd like one formula that I can use on the whole spreadsheet rather than having to apply two different formulas after I've parsed out the data.
Help!