"Maki" wrote:
What's the cause of incidents when data in two
cells, looking exactly the same, are not recognised
by Excel as the same?

Sorry, but my mindreading powers are weakened by the kryptonite sitting next
to me.

Exactly how are you using VLOOKUP? What is the lookup value? What values
are in the lookup table? How are the values derived? For example, is text
imported; are numbers the result of formulas?

If you are looking at numbers with decimal fractions that are the result of
formulas, it is quite common that the displayed value is not exactly equal to
the underlying actual value.

If you are looking at text that was imported, it is quite common that what
appears to be spaces are actually a non-breaking spaces (NBSPs), ASCII code
160.

There are ways of dealing with both. But it really is not worth the time to
explore each problem, since there is no way to know which one applies to your
situation, if either does.


----- original message -----

"Maki" wrote:
Hi all,

What's the cause of incidents when data in two cells, looking exactly the
same, are not recognised by Excel as the same?

It happens quite often when:
- vlookup function doesn't return any value even though the lookup_value
exist and looking exactly the same in lookup table;
- the same data appears multiple times when you do advanced filtering and
check "unique records only" checkbox; etc. etc.

I've looked at usual suspects, like numbers entered as text?, space at the
end of the record?, so on so forth, but, believe it or not, sometimes, these
things are exactly the same, at least to my naked eyes, and still Excel seems
to think they are different.

What other causes can there be in cases like this?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
--
Maki @ Canberra.AU