Problem with vlookup unless I multiply by one

[immigrated4urjob]

Hi,

I am trying to Vlookup two different workbooks and trying to do a simple join in Python, to give you some context.

However, I see that Vlookup only works when I multiply source file (paste special multiply seems to work when I multiply first column in main data), in first column, from SAP (this file converted to table from text). Why is this the case?

Have tried casting that column into text within Python and Excel but in both cases there is no return.

I am attaching two files. If you can tell me what is the core issue, and how I can avoid this "multiplication" step altogether? It would help my program my data cleansing code a lot, cheers.

The file has over 20,000 rows so had to cut down on both. I know you can't lookup as data might be not match in both, but I am interested in figuring it what is the data type issue that constantly makes me multiply first column by 1.

The suspect is the text file first, and then the lookup table.

[Pepe Le Mokko]

Haven't got much time, but this is typical of text looking like numbers. they are left aligned in cells, whilst real numbers are right-aligned.
Any arithmetical operation on text looking like numbers make them real numbers ( e.g.*1 or +0).

[immigrated4urjob]

You were correct, it has work. Had to copy paste the values back as text.