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Monday, January 25, 2010

Keeping Leading Zeroes

LEADING ZEROES


Excel drops leading zeroes which can be a problem sometimes when you want to sort invocie numbers, account numbers or zip codes. If you want Excel to keep the leading zeroes then you need to create a custom format.
  • Select the range you want to format

  • Right-click and select Format Cells

  • Select the Number tab

  • Under Category, select Custom

  • Enter the number of zeroes that your longest entry will have
    (In my example, I said 5)

  • Click OK.

If you are just working with zipcodes, an little bit easier method is to select Special under Category and then select Zipcode. (Social security and telephone formats are also there.)

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