Why does vlookup behave like this?

Hi!

This is my first thread/question in this what looks to be a great place for us temporarily lost in the Excel maze.

So I have this column which I type my familiar vlookup and it doesn't return a value, just the entire cell text content including the "=" character.

I sense that some function is somehow locked/disabled in the file I've gotten, but I really don't have any clue where to look for the source of this issue.

Please help!