Help with IF statements

[Lil]

Hope you can help. I have a data list for groups that have numeric
codes with alpha endings. This is linked to summary sheets that pick
up the data by matching the exact group code in the criteria, which
means a different summary sheet for each numeric/alpha combination.
I want to reduce the number of summary sheets and pickup data for each
group code, regardless of the alpha ending.

A wildcard works in VLOOKUP but not in the IF statement. Here's the
current formula:

=IF('[path.xls]Groups Sheet'!F68="00-950A",
(VLOOKUP("00-950A",'[path.xls]Group Sheet'!F68:$U$418,5,FALSE))," ")

Thanks
Lil