If Excel notices a text value that only has numbers in it, the cell will get flagged. =VLOOKUP(VALUE(A2), $D$2:$Z$400, 3, FALSE) Convert Text Into ValuesĪnother option could be to convert all the text values to numerical ones. Similar to how you can use TRIM within a lookup function to cleanup your data, you can also use VALUE in the same fashion with your lookup functions. Use The VALUE Function With LOOKUP Functions This is because there was an extra space entered in Cell B2. What is causing this ? Both cells have just the word 'Hello' in them! Well, if you use the LEN( ) function to determine the length (how many characters) of our 'Hello' values, you will see that Value 1 has a length of 5 and Value 2 has a length of 6. This text is giving us a FALSE which means they do not equal each other. These 'ghost' characters take form as spaces and if they occur in the beginning or end of text, we cannot see any visual evidence of their existence! In the example below, Cell C2 is testing to see if A2 = B2.
Sometimes when you receive extracted data or you are trying to compare two data sets, 'ghost' characters will slip into the cell values and try to play tricks with you.
EXCEL 2016 REVIEW MR EXCEL SERIES
The only way to find out is to cut in and see what's inside! Below I will list a series of tests you can perform on your values to determine why Excel thinks data points are different when they appear to be the same.
Not what you were expecting, right? The main point I want to get across to you today is things might not always be as they appear in Excel.