Am 03.11.2010 14:02, Phil Hibbs wrote:
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.
Pardon? What are you talking about? Would you mind to post some example
data?
A spreadsheet *is* a simplified programming language. You will get wrong
results if you do not understand the difference between "123" and 123 or
the difference between values and formatting. What you get is not what
you see.
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