VLOOKUP result error...zero instead of text

Posted by Dustin on February 23, 2001 10:46 AM

Does anyone know why my VLOOKUP would be returning all zeros instead of the actual text that is in the referenced cells?

I am using VLOOKUP from one worksheet to look up values on another sheet. The target range has only words in the column that I am trying to pull from, but my result shows only a single zero?!?!?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

Posted by Dave Hawley on February 23, 2001 12:21 PM

Dustin, If you are getting a zero it is probably because the column you are returning your result from is blank.

=VLOOKUP("Dog",Sheet1!A1:C10,3,FALSE)

This example will search for the text "Dog" in the range A1:A10 and return the data from the same row but in column C, which is why the "3" is in the function. The FALSE tells VLOOKUP to find an exact match.

Does this help

OzGrid Business Applications

Posted by Dustin on February 26, 2001 8:15 AM

Dave,
Thanks for your response. Unfortunately the answer is no, that did not help.

The cell being referenced (3 or column C in your example) does contain a value (a date) which is not diaplayed in the cell containing the VLOOKUP formula. The formula result is a single zero instead of the date. When I add in the FALSE as you recommended I got a #NAME? error instead.

Any idea as to what I am doing wrong? Cell Formatting, etc...

Thanks again Dave.

Posted by David Hawley on February 26, 2001 4:38 PM

Hi Dustin

I'm still a bit unsure of what it is you are trying to lookup, is it a date and number or text.
If a date then see the example below.
=VLOOKUP(DATEVALUE("15/2/01"),Sheet1!A1:C10,3,FALSE)

If not then please post you formula here so I can get a better idea.

OzGrid Business Applications