I find this to be reallllly klunky (because of the performance hit incurred
by invoking Vlookup twice if it is True), but the common solution is to use
the ISERROR or ISNA functions in an IF statement:

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(E2,$M$26:$N$45,2)), "", VLOOKUP(E2,$M$26:$N$45,2))

Another approach might be to set a Conditional Format where the font color =
cell backgound (white) if this formula is True: =ISNA(J2)

HTH,
--
George Nicholson

Remove 'Junk' from return address.


"Ron M." wrote in message
oups.com...
I used the VLOOKUP function and it worked fine. This was my first time
to use it, so I had to hack on it a bit, but I figured it out. One
thing, though: instead of naming the table, I just used the cell range.
The cell range of the table is M26 to N45. So the VLOOKUP formula is:

=(VLOOKUP(E2,$M$26:$N$45,2))

The district number is entered in Column E. The name of the person
assigned to that district appears in Column J, as a result of the
VLOOKUP formula.

This has caused something else, though, that I'm trying to fix. In the
empty rows where no district numbers have been entered yet, I get the
"#N/A" error message in Column J. Since there are still several
thousand empty rows, this looks kinda ugly. Can somebody tell me how
to tweak the formula so the cell in Column J would just stay blank
until a district number is entered in Column E?

Ron M.