I have a table of values like this from A1 to B4
A B
1 123 wall
2 254 chair
3 389 book
4 478 pen

Now I want to write a function (maybe with "lookup") to look at the
first tree characters in coloum A and return the value of it (here,
writen in coloumb B) I have tried with this:

A B C
1 123 wall =lookup(left(A1;3);A1:B4;2)
2 254 chair
3 389 book
4 478 pen

but I get #N/A in C1
if I write =lookup(123;A1:B4;2) I get 2
where as I would like to get "wall"
I have also tried with =VLOOKUP(123,A1:B4,2,FALSE) it gives me "there is
an error in the formula"


can anyone help pls?