I was trying on Google Sheets a very simple VLookup with partial match (using wild card), and for some reason I can't seem to make that work. My formula is rather simple:

=VLOOKUP("*"&A2&"*",$D:$E,2,0)

Where D:E is my lookup table and A2 is the cell to be partially searched. I'm searching for the word "John J" while in my lookup table I have "John" with Id 1. So my VLOOKUP above should return 1.