VLookup is perfect for numerical values contained in a range. However if you tried to use VLookup with text in a table, it's use would be limited, For example surnames such as Smith, Smithson, Smithy, Smithson-Jacobs would create problems. If you entered a surname incorrectly, VLookup will step back to the closest possible match.
If you wish to glean information from a table that uses text, you can use VLookups optional fourth argument called match-type. This argument forces VLookup to return #N/A if an exact match cannot be found in the first column of your table. This type of VLookup is perfect to glean information from an address list.
Let's say we wanted to find out the phone number of Smithson-Jacob. We would use =VLOOKUP(B15,A2:E11,4,FALSE). Telling Excel to lookup Smithson-Jacobs in the table range and return the value on the same row in the fourth column. By using the optional fourth argument, FALSE, Excel is forced to return either an exact match (as it has done) or #N/A if it can't find an exact match.
If we wanted to find the Date of Birth from within the Table we could use =VLOOKUP(B15,A2:E11,5,FALSE), which tells Excel to return the value in the fifth column on the same row.
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