ignoring the seed strings???

Can anyone please help me find a way to ignore the seed strings.
Example i import data of say names
steve jones, paul jones etc but in some cases it imports (5) steve jones or (db) steve jones and then the lookup wont produce the right data and i get #N/A coming up
so it has
steve jones 10
tom jones 15
(4) steve jones #N/A

i would like to be able to do a vlookup on another tab of that information and just import everything except ( ) and the contents

thanks

Not entirely sure I follow but if you need to adjust the VLOOKUP to remove the (xxxx) from the criteria value then perhaps:

B1: =VLOOKUP(TRIM(REPLACE($A1,FIND("(",$A1&"("),FIND(")",$A1&")"),"")),Sheet2!$A:$B,2,0)

where A1 holds your string (be it Tom Jones or (xys) Tom Jones) and Sheet2!A:B holds your lookup table containing only Tom Jones.

If the above is not what you require please post a sample file detailing expected results etc...