It's more than formatting.

The values in the cells have to match.

If you have a cell formatted as General and type 12345 in that cell, then later
format the cell as text, the value in that cell will still be a number (until
you edit that cell).

If your lookup table has its key values as text, you can use:
=vlookup(text(g6,"00000"),.....

To match text with text.

If your lookup table has its key values as numbers, you can use:
=vlookup(--g6,....)

the -- converts the text value to numbers.

=======
Personally, I'd choose a format (number or text) and make sure my data matched
in both spots.

If you want to convert those text numbers to numeric numbers (huh?), you can do
this:

Copy an empty cell.
select your column
edit|paste special|check Add

or

Select your column
data|text to columns|finish.


dandigger wrote:

I've tried searching, I've used contextures.com but couldn't find the right
help.
I have an extremely large table: A2:C49918
Column A = Zip Codes Column B = State Column C = County
What I want is the state and county to pull when someone enters a zip in
field G6 of a different sheet. my formula for state is as follows:
=vlookup(G6,'Zip Code Lookup'!$A$2:$C$49918,2) and I am getting the
infamous #NA as a returned result after I enter a valid value into G6. any
suggestions. once I get this formula to work, I can use it to pull the county
as well.
and yes, I have formatted the values to 'Numbers' rather than 'Text'
Thanks in advance

--

Dave Peterson