Hi,

I'm using a column of data in a VLOOKUP search.  Unfortunately the actual
data can have asterisks at the end, e.g.

MyDataColumn
EBV-1003
EBV-1004*
EBV-1005

MyDataTable
EBV-1003           Valve
EBV-1003*         Test Valve
EBV-1004           Valve
EBV-1004*         Test Valve
EBV-1005           Valve
EBV-1005*         Test Valve

ValveType = VLOOKUP(MyDataColumn, MyDataTable, 2, FALSE)

...as you can see EBV-1004* will not find the test valve, it will find the
first match because the asterisk is treated as a wildcard.  I have solved the
problem using SEARCH and REPLACE to repace the "*" with "~*" as per Help.  It
works fine but man oh man, the formula is complex.  (Because of all the
necessary ISERRORs.)

My question is:  can I tell VLOOKUP to just look it up literally (binary
search) and not use wildcards?  Is there a flag to set or maybe a different
function to use?  Did I miss one of the lookup functions somewhere?

TIA,
Charlie