help with excel.

devonmark

Hi All,

Can anyone help? I am having to fill in an Excel Spreadsheet.

Whenever I fill in a cell with a figure that starts with a 0 or 00 it cuts the 0's off.

So if i am trying to type in 00123 it cuts it to 123.

Can anyone tell me how to stop this from happening.

Thanks in advance

Mark

mdbarber

its because of numeric formatting, format the cells as text

f1charlie

Or when entering the number precede it with '
ie '00123, then it is treated as text

foreversomeday

There is a neater way :~)

From the Microsoft website:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214233

Typing a Value with Leading Zeros

Because leading zeros are insignificant digits, Microsoft Excel omits them when you type a number, such as 00023, in a cell. In this case, Microsoft Excel applies the General number format.

To type a value with a leading zero, you can use one of the methods described in the previous section to type the value as text, or you can use the following steps to create a custom number format that contains leading zeros.
1.Select the cell range that you want to format.
2.On the Format menu, click Cells. On the Number tab, click Custom.
3.In the Type box, type a zero for each digit in the number. For example, if the number has five digits, type five zeros.
4.Click OK.