Hi Pete,

You are almost there. Y have just forgotten the fourth argument which tells
VLOOKUP wheather the lookup range is sorted alfabetically/ascendingly or
not. In your case you need to search for exact matches in a non sorted list
so your formula should have the 4th argument FALSE or simply 0. When the
list is sorted you can either ommit the fourth argument or use TRUE or 1.
Also, since you are copying your formula down I recommend that you use an
absolute reference for your source table, like this:

=VLOOKUP(A1,Lookup!$A$2:$B$6,2,0)

Regards,
KL


"Pete Cumberland" wrote in
message ...
I want to use vlookup to convert grades (A, B, C, etc) to numeric values
but
have been unable to do so. I've been to the Contextures web page which
gives help on this and have read, in confusion, a solution but am still
unable to get it to work.

This is what I've done:
Sheet 1 I've called "Numeric"

and I've entered a series of text grades in column A

I've created a table of grades and numbers in sheet "Lookup" which is
entered in cells A1:B6 with cells A2:B6 being the field array
Grade Score
E 35
D 45
C 55
B 65
A 75


In Sheet "Numeric" column B adjacent to the text grades (A1:A5) I've
entered the formulas

=VLOOKUP(A1,Lookup!A2:B6,2)
=VLOOKUP(A2,Lookup!A2:B6,2)
=VLOOKUP(A3,Lookup!A2:B6,2)
=VLOOKUP(A4,Lookup!A2:B6,2)
=VLOOKUP(A5,Lookup!A2:B6,2)

which, bizarrely, gives the result:

D 75.00
C 75.00
A 75.00
B 65.00
E 75.00


Why is this happening?

Pete