Lookup both text and numbers

[Peinecone]

I am using a VLOOKUP to lookup a reference in multiple sheets. The problem is some of the reference values are numbers and some are text. So I am getting the #VALUE error. There must be an easy work around for this but I can't figure it out. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

[Special-K]

Turn the numbers into text using a Helper column, so you are looking up everything in text, that way you wont get an error.
Concatenation using & may solve this with a bit of work.