Number stored as text

Hi,

I am trying to create a report that pulls out a list of item nos., some are all numbers some are numbers and letters. Then looks those up in a different table using a Vlookup. My problem comes from the item no. field being formatted as number stored as text and not finding the results in my lookup table. I think I need the item no. field to be formatted as text, but I don't know how to make that happen.

Any help would be great,

Thanks!