Unique List - Sort with Text and Numbers

I have a formula that extracts a unique distinct list from a column of data. It only seems to work with text or numbers, but not both. I have been trying to get it to work with numbers to no avail.
I would like to ideally be able to use an if function that would convert the numbers into text in memory, instead of creating a separate countif number formula for each countif in the formula.

=INDEX(List,MATCH(MIN(IF(COUNTIF($B$2:B2,List)=0,1,MAX((COUNTIF(List,"<"&List)+1)*2))*(COUNTIF(List,"<"&List)+1)),COUNTIF(List,"<"&List)+1,0))

I have tried if(isnumber(list),text(list,"0" before the first countif.
I hope someone can help.

Thanks. I learnt something new that countif does not allow coercing of ranges. I had spent a long while trying to do that very thing. So the other alternative beside =TEXT(D3,"@") is to basically create additional countifs just for numbers in the list, which will probably make the formula very long.