Hopeful,

This sounds like a formatting issue (which probably won't come as a surprise
to you!).

For example, if column A contains the values 1,2,A,B and the corresponing
entries in column B are One, Two, AAA, BBB a lookup formula of

=vlookup("1",A1:B4,2,false) will return #N/A because Excel is looking for
the text value 1 and not the numerical value 1 (which sounds like the problem
you are experiencing).

If I change the format of column A to be text this should solve the problem
- no! The formula will not update unless you edit the cell (F2) and then
press return - you don't want to do this for all cells!

Best way to get round this is choose a column with no data, enter a formula
along the lines of =proper(A1), copy down so all values you will be looking
up on are covered. Select this list of formulas, copy and then paste special
the values back to your original column.

Excel will now pick up the lookup values for you (assuming there is a match).

Sounds long winded but it takes a few seconds to do.

"Hopeful" wrote:

I have been working with vlookup tables for a while now but when I started a
new one with some new date from another source, it stopped working. It will
not return values that I ask it to lookup. The date is both numerical and
text. I have sorted the date in ascending order. I have tried changing the
data from number to text to general. Nothing seems to work.

If I open another sheet up and try to a vlookup it works. It is just not
working with my new data.

Thanks