Why does vlookup behave like this?

[FFrrEEddRRiiKK]

Hi!

This is my first thread/question in this what looks to be a great place for us temporarily lost in the Excel maze.

So I have this column which I type my familiar vlookup and it doesn't return a value, just the entire cell text content including the "=" character.

I sense that some function is somehow locked/disabled in the file I've gotten, but I really don't have any clue where to look for the source of this issue.

Please help!

[JBeaucaire]

Try pressing Ctrl `

(that's the unshifted tilde key, often just left of the 1 key on the number row.)

Or, Tools > Options > View > Formulas

[FFrrEEddRRiiKK]

Nothing really happens. Please clarify!

[Shijesh Kumar]

Select the entire column.

Click on Data -> Text to column.

Select Fixed Width ..

Click on Finish

[VBA Noob]

Using Ctrl + ' or Tools > options > view > Formulas will display all the formulas in the workbook

You could also check the formatting of the cell. If it's formatted as text then this may be causing you're problem

HTH

VBA Noob

[FFrrEEddRRiiKK]

Using Ctrl + ' or Tools > options > view > Formulas will display all the formulas in the workbook

Did this, and indeed result is the same, while opening a fresh workbook, this indeed works as explained. So no help in this case.

Select the entire column.
Click on Data -> Text to column.
Select Fixed Width ..
Click on Finish

Thanks for helping me discover this great feature. However, it doesn’t help the above.
The cell just won't do the calculation!

So what I did next..
I discovered that making sure the format was in this case General and going into Formulas > Insert Function and pushing enter on just the first row; Lookup_value, it now works!

Hmmm.. Feels a bit strange that one would need to go into Formulas > Insert Function and activate the function there when it is already inserted in the cell?

Anyway thanks all for helping out, I really appreciate it, and am now back on track!

[DonkeyOte]

Shijesh's example of Text to Columns mimics what you did manually - ie it should coerce all selected cells such that formulae entered as text become formulae... I can think of no reason this should not have worked for you.

It may also be worth point out that you can achieve the same thing running an Edit Replace on the affected cells, replacing = with =
(strange but true)

[ffffloyd]

I was coming in to say that it looks like your cell is formatted as Text so you need to set it to General, but it looks like you've solved the problem now.