Patricia, try this:

highlight column A of your Keys sheet, click Data | Text-to-columns,
then click Finish when the first panel pops up - this usually clears
the type of error you describe, rather than pressing F2 on every cell
in turn.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Feb 27, 6:34 pm, Patricia Lynch
wrote:
Niek- the cells are formatted "General". There are no leading space or
trailing spaces. One other fix I just found is to move onto the cell, hit F2
then move off of the cell..... this corrects the problem.



"Niek Otten" wrote:
================================================== ===============
Your Numbers don't behave (like numbers)
Niek Otten, May 11, 2006

Your numbers sort incorrectly, are not included in SUMs, cause #VALUE! results in formulas, cannot be found in LOOKUPs, etc.
In short:

Your Numbers look like Numbers, but they really are Text.
Sure! You formatted them as numbers, but alas, formatting afterwards doesn't help. Believe me, they are Text!

Here's a checklist which will help you solve most known cases. Make a copy of your workbook before trying! Always use Excel's
ISNUMBER() function to check your cells; maybe you solved your problem in the first step!

· Format an empty cell as Number. Enter the number 1 in it. EditCopy.
Select your "numbers". EditPaste Special, check Multiply. Hopefully your cells are "real" Numbers now
· If that doesn't help, there may be spaces in your "numbers". You can use the LEN() function to compare the number
of characters that Excel sees in the cell with the number of characters you see. If you suspect spaces, use Excel's TRIM()
function to remove them
· If that doesn't help, there may be nonprintable characters in your "numbers". You can use Excel's CLEAN() function
to remove most of them
· If that doesn't help, there may be non-breaking spaces in your "numbers" (mostly acquired from Web Pages). Use
David McRitchie's TRIMALL() function to remove them. It can be downloaded he
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm#trimall

================================================== ===============

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Patricia Lynch" wrote in message
...
| when using vlookup on a list - I often find that I get N/A as an answer
| unless I retype the item I am looking up. When I retype the value that I am
| looking up, the correct corresponding value is then pulled from the list....
| is there a workaround for this other than to retype every value you have to
| look up?
| thanks- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -