Can't build an alert - formula-based email not acceptable

Hello community! Anyone have a work-around for this? Here's the situation:

I’ve created a vlookup formula in my sheet to obtain an email address from another sheet, and then want to alert someone using the email address result from the formula. When I go to build the condition in the alert (for approval), the alert will not allow me to create the condition to send an alert to that email address. What’s the workaround?

Additionally:

1. When I define the email column as a text field it is not available in the alert to send an approval request to

2. When I change the definition of the email column to a contact list and then return to define the alert condition, I get the error message "Contact Column does not support formulas"; I've also tried other col defs, but the column doesn't show up as a selection option in the alert condition on anything other than type = contact list.

 

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