Max wrote...
Try something like: =VLOOKUP(E2+0,$U$2:$V$24,2,FALSE)

The "+0" operation made to the pasted lookup values in col E
might suffice to coerce these to real numbers.
Or we could try multiply by 1, viz.: E2*1

Or we could exponentiate by 1, E2^1, or FTSHOI, double unary minuses,
--E2, but don't forget unnecessary function calls, VALUE(E2).

The key points for the OP are whether COUNT(E2) returns 1 or 0, whether
COUNT(U2:U24) returns 23 or 0 or something in between, and that number
formatting has no affect whatsoever on value. Format a cell as Text,
and if you paste a number into that cell it'll still be a number, not
text.