When you open an Excel spreadsheet, by default the columns are indexed by letters. However if you'd like to change the format and have the index in numbers, follow the step-by-step guide below.

In this latter case, change the formula to:=VLOOKUP ("string", E3:H10, 3, FALSE) Replace "string" in the formula with the alphanumeric mix that you want VLOOKUP to find.

Microsoft Excel multiplies each cell by 1, and in doing so, converts the text to numbers. We hope this tutorial helps you understand how to convert numbers stored as text to numbers in Excel.