Hi,

i have column a with say for example 1444 Okuma, i than use the Left function to grab the first 4 characters and put it into column b than i use vlookup to get the data, now i know u cant use vlookup with formulas and column a will come from another source which is populated into excel and i have no control over this, is there any othe way of getting around this.

Thanks Sal

What do you mean when you say "u cant use vlookup with formulas"?

You can certainly use VLOOKUP to find the values that are returned by the LEFT function, either indirectly:

=VLOOKUP("1444",B1:C20,2,0) where 1444 is the result of the LEFT function in Column B.

or directly:

=VLOOKUP(LEFT(A11,4),B1:C20,2,0)

Please explain in a little more detail what you are trying to do.