Thanks for hanging with me, I was unable to download that add-in on my work
computer. I just ran it and the space has a 160 in Dec line and there is a
"^" underneath it in the Special line.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Maybe it's the space character between first and last names.

What did Chip's addin show as that character?

Was it x160 (the HTML non-breaking space character)?
Wis it x32 (a normal space character)?

AJSloss wrote:

The answer to the first question is "bobby abreu"

The answer to the second question is that it returns true.

However, when I compare the internet data cell (that contains "*Bobby
Abreu") to a manually typed cell (containing "*Bobby Abreu") using exact, it
returns false.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

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
.


--

Dave Peterson
.