One small change and it should work for you just fine:
=CountIf(C15:C500,"<" & VLookup(C8,sawmill,2))

Note the addition of the & to make the results of the VLOOKUP part of the
condition.

"sjl" wrote:

countif(range,criteria)
sawmill table is
10 125
12 150
14 175
i have a large range of numbers and am trying to use a vlookup in the
criteria.
i cant get this formula to work =countif(c15:c500,"<"vlookup(c8,sawmill,2))
where c8 is a value of 10, 12 or 14

thanks for any help