If you put this in a cell:

=IF(LEFT(B3, 1)="*", MID(B3, 2, 100), B3)
What gets returned?

How about
=len(b3)=len("*bobby abreu")
Does this return true or false?

I'm guessing that you have other characters in that cell. Depending on what
they are, you may be able to adjust the formula or fix the data.

Chip Pearson has a very nice addin that will help determine what's in the cell:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.aspx

AJSloss wrote:

I copied and pasted a table from the internet that has "*Bobby Abreu" in cell
B3. In cell AF3 I have the formula: =VLOOKUP(IF(LEFT(B3, 1)="*", MID(B3, 2,
100), B3), draft, 2, FALSE), resulting in an error (#N/A).

If I manually type "*Bobby Abreu" in cell B3, then the correct result, "65",
turns up in cell AF3.

I've gone through evaluate formula and both times it shows that vlookup is
searching for "Bobby Abreu" in the draft table, however, when I have the
internet data in, it keeps showing the error.

I don't want to have to manually type in the names, as there are about 600.
Is there something with the format of the cell that is causing this, or some
kind of hidden characters in the internet data?

--

Dave Peterson