there can also be non printing charaters which do not be removed with Trim()
and clean()
selet an apparent match (A20?)and
in an empty cell enter
='[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port History'!$A20
see if it says what you want it to.
if it does
then
=AH2=='[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port History'!$A20
from your response to the vlookupI assume it will say false (if it doesn't
reinstall excel)
then try
=len(AH2)
and
=len('[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port History'!$A20)
they will probably be different but whether or not
try
=mid(AH2,1,1)=mid('[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port
History'!$A20,1,1)
as long as the resullt is true change the 1,1 to 2,1 then 3,1 until the
result is false
once the result is false, you can use
=code(mid(AH2,1,1))
and
=code(mid('[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port
History'!$A20,1,1))
to try to identify what the difference is.



"Janis" wrote:

I'm in the current sheet, doing this formula on column AI a blank column. I
want to lookup values in column AH on the 98th percentile report column K
which is the 11th column on this other workbook shet?
=VLOOKUP(AH2,'[07-0714 Bay-Downstream Ports 98th Percentile.xls]Port
History'!$A:$K,11,FALSE)
Why doesn't it find any matches? I was extremely careful. I
even cleaned both columns in case there were any spaces. The cells have
groups of letters with a comma, ie. abcd, or abcd,efgh, . There are many
matches. It
should find matches on the other column with another set abcd, or abcd,efgh,

I can't figure out why I get all #na's. I can't even get a match but what
I really want to do is pull in the figures on column I if there is a match on
column K. How do I do that?
thanks,