Hello group.

I've delved into the acrhives for this topic but haven't seen it
specifically addressed.

I have two columns of values ("E" is 480 rows and "J" is 2200 rows).
Some values in E appear in J; this I've verified using <ctrl+<f. For
each row in E, I am entering
=SEARCH(E5, J$5:J$2238)
to simply result in a 1 if there's a match and #VALUE if not. In
another column I am using =IF(ISERROR(K5), "new", "existing") to
determine my result so I am expecting _some_ #VALUEs.

To create the two coumns, I had concatenated other columns. In an
effort to eliminate any formatting concerns, I copied the columns and
pasted special as values.

I've entered the formula using <enter and the array method
<ctrl+<shift+<enter.

Regardless of the entry method or formatting (general, text, number), I
am getting #VALUE in every row, including rows where the value in E
_does_ appear in J$5:J$2238.

I imagine I am missing something extraordinarily simple; anyone know
what it is? I know from online help when #VALUE is to result but none
of the three cases apply to this.


Regards,
Patrick