Sorry to be dumb, Jay but I'm still confused and can't get it to work.

I can't put in the exact string since it will be a drop down choice so I put
in the cell reference in quote and not in quote and neither worked - I keep
getting a #NAME? error referring to that part of the formula.

=VLOOKUP(C4,H4:I100,I,FALSE)

=VLOOKUP("C4",H4:I100,I,FALSE)

Also, there's the issue that I don't want to enter the result from the cost
column every time.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

KateW