You should use exact match in your formula

=VLOOKUP(D18,'Employee Info'!$A$4:$E$503,5,0)

or

=VLOOKUP(D18,'Employee Info'!$A$4:$E$503,5,FALSE)

that way you'll get an error when excel can't find the lookup value

--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom


"Bobby" wrote in message
...
Here is what I wrote
=VLOOKUP(D18,'Employee Info'!$A$4:$E$503,5)
D18 is a validation pulldown(list) of Employee Names listed in 'Employee
Info' A-column.
5 is the column I'm trying to extract the information from that gives me
000000

'Employee Info'!$A$4:$E$503 is the employee information with a table sort
executed with the Last names as the left column from column C instead of
A.
Looking at where I'm getting the error, it shows that the sort actually
keeps
everything in alphabetized.

Column A is a consolidated (LAST Name First Name) list of 300+ employees.
I did this by combining a column of Last name and a column of first names
via,
=C4& " "&D4 = (SMITH John)
C-column being Last Names
D-column being First Names

Kind of a strange way of extracting info, I know. Thanks for the
suggestings.
Bobby

"Bobby" wrote:

The Data is a bunch of Last Names in one Column and First names in the
next
and I've sorted the data properly. The Range also includes the entire
table
to include a bunch of empty rows towards the end. Do you think that this
may
be the problem? Thanks for the response.
YoYo

"Jezebel" wrote:

Check that your data is properly sorted, and your range correctly
defined.
There isn't an inherent limit: the function works as expected on
correct
data, to the full limit of the spreadsheet.


"Bobby" wrote in message
...
Has anyone else had problems with VLOOKUP if there are more than 250
rows
the
VLOOKUP value defaults to 00000 instead of returning a value from
the
column
in which it is supposed to extract from.