I think the '*' in the last position of my item number is
causing Excel to treat that like a wildcard and not find
the EXACT match.

You are correct.

Try it like this:

=VLOOKUP(SUBSTITUTE(A828,"*","~*"),'[ilicst
16-jul-08.xls]Sheet1'!$A$2:$I$10189,8,0)

In the formula, we "virtually" replace the * with ~*. The ~ tells Excel to
treat the * as a literal character and not a wildcard.

Note that this is based on your *limited* sample. The sample lookup values
you posted are TEXT strings. This approach won't work if your lookup values
were numbers because the result of the SUBSTITUTE function is a *TEXT*
value. For example:

10
10*

The above formula wouldn't be able to find 10 because the SUBSTITUTE
function converts it from numeric 10 to text "10".



--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Eric @ BP-EVV" wrote in message
...
I am looking up an on-hand quantity from one table to populate another
table
based on an item number. I have a couple of scenarios where VLookup is
bringing back the same value for both items, but when I look them up
manually, I find that the two items have a different on-hand value. For
item
number UX2022U and UX2022U* I get the same on-hand returned....smae thing
goes for item numbers UX2022R and UX2022R*. The vlookup I am using is
this:

=VLOOKUP(A828,'[ilicst 16-jul-08.xls]Sheet1'!$A$2:$I$10189,8,FALSE)

Doesn't the "FALSE" in the expression tell Excel to find an EXACT match ?
I
think the '*' in the last position of my item number is causing Excel to
treat that like a wildcard and not find the EXACT match.

Any ideas on how to work around this ?

Thanks !