VLOOKUP function in Excel 97

[Guest]

How do I get the VLOOKUP function to work on large table arrays (>40,000
rows)? Excel doesn't seem to see the cells in the array unless I use the
edit command on the coresponding lookup value in the array.

I'm using Excel 97. The table array is a downloaded Crystal Reports file.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Sounds like you have values that appear to be numbers but are actually
stored as text.

select the column

Format as number or general

do Data=>TexttoColumns, selected delimited and on the next dialog, select a
delimiter such as Tab that does not appear in the column. This should cause
the values to be reevaluated back to numbers.