Hi Dean,

Two things:

a. Setting the 4th argument to TRUE (as you did) or omit it, means an exact match is not required. Set it to FALSE.
b. You probably have one or more hidden characters (like spaces) in either the lookup table or your search argument ("Dean", in
this case). You can easily find out with the LEN() function. Correct that and all should be fine
If not, post again in this thread.

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Melbridge" wrote in message ...
|I have 2 workbooks open and want to lookup data from one and display it in
| the other.
| The workbook with the data in [CUST NOS.xls] contains the customer name in
| column A (sorted) and the customer number in column B
| I want to lookup the customer name (which is in column A of the active
| workbook) and display the relevant customer number, I'm using the following
| formula:
|
| =VLOOKUP(A2,'[CUST NOS.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$B$174,2,TRUE)
|
| For some reason it displays the number from the previous row.
| eg
| A B
| 1 Alan 123
| 2 Bob 234
| 3 Dean 345
| 4 John 456
|
| If the customer being looked up was Dean it displays 234 when it should
| display 345.
| I can bodge it by inserting a cell at the beginning of the customer name
| column to push all the names down 1 cell relative to the customer number
| column but this is an ugly solution to a problem that shouldn't exist!
|
| Any help? Thanks, Dean. (Melbridge)