VLOOKUP and COUNTIF will not find a numeric search value in a list of text cells. They will, however, find a text value in a list of numeric cells. Why one way but not the other? I am not a fan of strong typing in end-user applications (it's fine for programming languages, but not all spreadsheet users have a programmer's mindset or dilligence).
At least VLOOKUP and COUNTIF are mutually consistent - Excel will not work either way in VLOOKUP, but works both ways (text in a list of numbers, and number in a list of texts) in COUNTIF. Having said that - if the list contains the text being looked for and the same value as a number, then COUNTIF as text will find both and return 2. If looking for it as a number, it only finds one of them. So, is 1 in the list once or twice? That depends on how you look. Not ideal. This inconsistency raises this behaviour from a "feature" to a "bug" in my opinion. Phil. -- Don't you just hate self-referential sigs?
