Use vlookup with FALSE or 0 as the last parameter if you want exact match,
formatting to general does not make any difference if the values are text
already, also you might want to check if you might have leading or trailing
spaces in either the lookup value or in the lookup range


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom


"jackieu" wrote in message
...
getting error msg but I have tried all the tricks and I can see there are
valid matches in the data page
tried sorting, formatting to general, etc etc but still get error.
This never happended before, it looks like it cannot recognize or "see"
the
data....

anyone?

thanks
Jackie