If you type 51 into a cell, then unless you have preformatted the cell as
text the 51 will be stored as a number. If you extract 51 with the MID
function it will be text. The data range in which you are doing the lookup
is presumably stored as numbers, so the text won't be found.
If you want to convert the text to numbers, change =MID(A3,3,2) to
=--MID(A3,3,2)
--
David Biddulph

"twins160" wrote in message
...
Hi, I've been trying to find a solution to this all day. Any help to get
me
past this would be much appreciated.

Using VLOOKUP, I have a car license plate e.g. AB51 DVL.
On a separate worksheet I have a table with the CODE (51 etc) in one
column
and the DATE (e.g. Sept 2001) in the next. I need to create a VLOOKUP so
that
when a licence plate is entered, the date that corresponds to the code in
that licence plate is displayed in the correct cell. When I type in the
"51"
in the VLOOKUP I get the correct answer, but when I type the cell (e.g.A3)
where the licence plate is I get #N/A. I have tried to use MID function,
for
example =MID(A3,3,2) which extracts the number from the licence plate into
another cell and have used that cell as reference, but I still get the
#N/A.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
--
Business Computing Student