Excel: VLOOKUP from serial date to general number

Question

Everyday I receive a file where the date is in YYYYMMDD but it is stored as a number ie 20200203. However I want to do a VLOOKUP on this but I have a date value of 43760 (or similar). I cant change the file I am doing the VLOOKUP on as I only have a read only access.

How can I do this?

I have searched everywhere but cant actually find the solution. Only an issue

Answer 1

Use TEXT to format your date and then -- to convert the result to a number. If your date value is in A1 , then

=VLOOKUP(--TEXT(A1,"yyyymmdd"),...)