I work in accounting for a large bank and I created a chart that has
all the General Ledger Account numbers, Account Descriptions and
Account Status. For example the table will look something like
this...

451225 Car Rental 3
451226 Hotel/Motel 3
451250 Travel Expense 5
305115 Furniture 0


The first 6 digit number is the Account number
The words are the Account description
The last single digit character is a code to tell if the account is
good to post to, inactive or a rollup account (non postable account,
it accumulates a total from several other accounts)

I designed a spreadsheet that works with our G/L system so we can
upload the data each day instead of having a group of people enter the
data manually. I will attach a copy of that spreadsheet. The
formulas are put in the pull down menu INSERT - NAME section. I did
that so they won't interfere with the upload process and people seem
to have a harder time of accidentally changing the formula.

The problem. Most of the time when someone enters the Account number,
it brings back the proper description or warning. The warnings work
off the Account Status field (Inactive, non-postable or bad account).
Sometimes the data pulled from the VLookup table is inconsistent. I
have never had it pull the wrong description but I get non-postable,
inactive or bad when it is not. Sometimes the mere act of opening and
closing the VLookup table resets it and the data suddenly turns good
without any changes being made. Sometimes using the Text to Columns
on the Account column or the VLookup account column (Delimiter, turn
everything off) fixes the problem.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. How do I make it work
all the time? I would appreciate any help you have on this. I am not
opposed to using a different type of Data table if that is what it
takes.

P.S.

The account numbers I used in the example are made up. The companies
real account table is considered confidential. The formatting is the
same and I used the same number of characters. In our table, we have
just over 3000 accounts.