thanks ken this solved my problem

"Ken Puls" wrote:

Make your first column just the first number of the range. Assuming you
have the following table starting in Cell A1:
2 first
5 second
7 thired
9 fourth

Then in your vlookup, leave of the "False" argument. It will lookup up
the closest value and pick it. So if you looked up the following, it
will return "first"

=VLOOKUP(3,A1:B4,2)

HTH,

Ken Puls, CMA - Microsoft MVP (Excel)
www.excelguru.ca

nickfunsw wrote:
how do i assign a range of numbers to a single cell, i have a vlookup
function which looks up a table where the cells in the first column are
labled 2 to 5, 5 to 7, 7t o 9 and 9 to 12, but this is just text and excel
doesnt recognise it, how do i get these cells to actually represent these
ranges