Maybe your workbook is getting corrupted, if not make sure the format in all
cells with the formulas are general and not text, then force a calculation
by replacing all equal signs with equal sign

find what = replace with =

replace all

if this is occurring more often then not maybe you should copy over data to
a new workbook and finally (so you don't have to edit the formulas when
changing lookup values) it's better to use a cell as a lookup value and then
change the criteria in that cell instead of typing things like "Carpets
national"

--
Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

Portland, Oregon




"maintchief" wrote in message
...
Excel 97, multiple worksheets. 1st worksheet is a list of contractors
used
at work listed by their category, i.e. 'Fire Alarm Maintenance', 'PTAC
Units', 'Dectron', etc. plus their phone numbers.
I use vlookup in sheets following sheet 1 to look in sheet 1 and load the
contractor name and phone numbers.
My first couple of sheets work fine with something like this:
'=VLOOKUP("Carpets national",PhoneList!$A$4:$G$33,4,FALSE)'.
In this example the National carpet contractor's phone number will display
in the sheet that this function is used in.
In a later sheet I use:
=vlookup("Dectron",PhoneList!$A$4:$G$33,4,false).
All I get in the receiving cell is the visual of the function. No data,
no
error.
when I click on the 'fn' on the toolbar I see each argument shown with the
proper result shown.
Any ideas on why the proper result is not being posted in the receiving
cell?