The study of the sugar-metal ion interactions remains one of the main objectives of carbohydrate coordination chemistry because the interactions between metal ions and carbohydrates are involved in many biochemical processes. This paper presents a comparison of coordination structures of erythritol with alkaline-earth-metal and lanthanide chloride and nitrate in the solid state using FT-IR and X-ray diffraction. Neutral, nondeprotonated erythritol (E) reacts with CaCl2 to give three CaCl2-erythritol (CaE(I), CaE(II), CaE(III)) complexes, showing that three of the five general features of calcium-carbohydrate complexes deduced in the reference encounter contrary examples. Different coordination structures have been observed for calcium and lanthanide chloride and nitrates. The coordination of carbohydrates to metal ions is complicated, and erythritol, chloride ions, nitrates, water molecules, and ethanol (crystallization medium and reaction solvents) have the chance to coordinate to metal ions. IR spectral results show that different lanthanide ions, from LaCl3 to TbCl3, have similar coordination structures with erythritol. The results show that erythritol can act as two bidentate neutral ligands (CaE(I), CaE(II), CaE(III), CaEN, PrE, NdE) or as a three-hydroxyl donor (NdEN). The IR results are consistent with the crystal structures.