MATCH function won't work with a cell reference

Question

I am trying to use INDEX/MATCH functions in a spreadsheet with multiple sheets.

Basically, I want Excel to look at the value in cell C3, find the row on another sheet that matches the value of C3, and return the value of the cell in column H in that row.

This formula I wrote below works if I put the value of C3 in quotes (e.g. "99213"), but it returns #N/A if I use the cell reference itself (e.g. C3; see below).

Am I missing something here? If it helps, the values in column C consist of 5-digit alpha-numeric strings, formatted as "General".

=INDEX('2015 RVU data'!$H$8:$H$8922,MATCH(C3,'2015 RVU data'!$A$8:$A$8922,0))

Solution

It means that your values in C3 are numeric while values in the lookup range are text. One of the solutions is:

=INDEX('2015 RVU data'!$H$8:$H$8922,MATCH(TEXT(C3,"0"),'2015 RVU data'!$A$8:$A$8922,0))

Or convert all your values in lookup range to numbers (assuming they all contain only numbers by:

=VALUE()