Zeros Displaying on Excel

Cotta

Hi,

I had an issue when I typed a string e.g. 0123456 it would appear as "123456," to counter this I set the format of the cell as "text" and this corrected the problem. However the issue now is if I cope the same text from a different source and paste it into the same cell set as "text" the zero again drops - how can this be corrected?

Thanks.

victor2

If you want to always make the cells display the same number of digits with leading zeros, then apply a custom format of 0000000 (for 7 digits). It then doesn't matter how you enter the data in, typing or pasting it.
You can even enter it without the leading zeros; 123 would show as 0000123 with that format.You could even do arithmetic on the numbers if you wanted, as they are not text as far as Excel is concerned.

mr_fishbulb

You can also stick a ' in front of the number - i.e. :

'0123456

AlwaysSomething

Third option: when you copy and paste from another cell, you bring the format of the copied cell with you. If, instead of using 'paste' you use 'paste special', then you can choose what elements of the copied data are transferred to the destination cell. If you choose 'Paste Special' then click 'Values', you will paste only the value into the destination cell, and won't upset its formatting.