I have a worksheet that's returning unexpected VLOOKUP
results, and I'm trying to narrow down the issue. I've run into a question I can't answer in my search for the solution.
Consider:
I have a lookup field that contains a list of Countries. If one of the entries in the list is Great Britain
, does VLOOKUP
analyze the ENTIRE string in the cell? or just the first word?
Consider Further:
If I have United States
in a cell, and I'm comparing that value to my VLOOKUP
set, what happens when I encounter United Arab Emirates
? Does the lookup stop because it matched United
? or does it continue because it's trying to match the String United States
against a lookup value of United States
?
Is it best to enclose lookup terms that include spaces in single or double quotes, or even do a comparison based on cell values with spaces stripped out of them?