Please help,

I frequently import data from databases contained in
Oracle using SQL. Once i get the data into the
spreadsheet and try to do VLOOKUPs or even simply 'FIND' a
number or text string my query has returned, i get an
error message. I have two solutions for this.

1. If the returned column is made up of only numbers (not
text), I can multiply the contents by 1, then do a VLOOKUP
or FIND on the new column. The numbers are the same, but
Excel only recognizes them after I have multiplied by one.

2. If there is text contained in the field returned, I
cannot use the above trick. I have to save as a ".csv"
file, then copy/paste special (values only) back into the
sheet I want to perform the VLOOKUP in. This appears to
change the format of all fields to 'text' and not 'number'
so a VLOOKUP referencing a typed-in number doesn't work.
I can VLOOKUP on the text, but not on columns that are
strictly numbers.


Is this some kind of weird formating issue? I have tried
formating the cells, but that doesn't work. The problem
seems deeper than that. Does anyone know a solution other
than the time consuming way I am doing it now??

Thanks for any help.