Working with "~" in excel

Try using double tildes:

=VLOOKUP(SUBSTITUTE(C1,"~","~~"),A:B,2,false)

The tilde is the special character in Excel to escape other special characters. Use a tilde to make the tilde you want to match a literal tilde (e.g. * in excel find matches any number of characters, but ~* will match a literal *).

The data I used it on is:

   A       B        C           D
~Hello     1      ~Hello       =VLOOKUP(SUBSTITUTE(C1,"~","~~"),A:B,2,false)
Hello      2

Cell D1 is returning me 1 (meaning it is matching ~Hello).

Clever Answer Jerry. Here is Further Explaination,

Microsoft Excel uses the tilde (~) as a marker to indicate that the next character is a literal. When you use the Find and Replace dialog box to find or replace a character such as a tilde (~), an asterisk (*), or a question mark (?), you must add a tilde (~) before the character in the Find what box.

How to find and replace tildes and wildcard characters in Excel