I am working with an excel file and I am trying to "map" some values with the vLookUp function.
The first parameter of the vLookUp function is giving me headaches: The function works with certains values (typed by hand in a text format)...but doesnt work with pre-generated values (the sames ones...but generated from an ERP system..). I checked to make sure that I was looking for "same nature" values ( text vs text ) ...but I can't find out why the first 3 values (typed by hand) are fine... but the last 3 (pre generated) gives me a #N/A error: It has to be a difference of "format" ..but I can't find out where's the difference...
This is the formula used: =VLOOKUP(D1;$A$1:$B$219;2;FALSE)
The actual file
1008600 379.99 1008600 379.99
1008601 379.99 1008601 379.99
1010600 449.99 1010600 449.99
1010601 449.99 1010601 #N/A
1013600 489.99 1013600 #N/A
1014601 509.99 1014601 #N/A
1015600 569.99
1018603 679.99
1019600 809.99
Thank you !
Using this formula will address the issue highlighted by RocketDonkey
=VLOOKUP(TEXT(D1,"#"),$A$1:$B$219,2,FALSE)
The issue is that you haven't converted you values in column A
to numbers. Since the first three values in your lookup range are themselves strings, they are matching the stringified numbers.
In order to fix, click on one of the numbers in column A
, press Ctrl+Space to select the entire column, and then click on the exclamation mark and select Convert to number
:
After that, you'll notice that your previous values now show errors, so follow the same process to conver them to numbers as well. @nutsch's solution is does not require you to modify your data, so if the type of your data is not crucial, that is a good fix as well :)
This has been a major pain for me as well(Excel is full of stupid assumptions). What I do is copy the entire column to a text editor, change the column to match the lookup column, and copy and paste the data back into the column. This has worked well for me.
May I highlight the little noticeable reply that Barry Houdini came with in 2012 above:
=VLOOKUP(D1&"",$A$1:$B$219,2,FALSE)
that really works (for me in Excel 2010), despite you are dealing with Numbers or a mix of Numbers or Text strings.
Cudos to Barry, you are a truely Houdini