A 0 in front

[seahawk56]

Is there a way to format a cell so that in a string of number if a 0 is in front it stays there. For example I will type in 007486 but I can only get it to show up as 7486.

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

You'll need to format it as Text.

HTH,

 

[seahawk56]

Thanks I tried formatting it to text before but I was not reentering the number in. So no 0's were still in front, but when I did reenter the number it worked great.
Thanks again

 

[xenou]

See here in the section on "leading zeros" - this only changes the way a number looks
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/NumberFormats.html

If you want to really preserve the underlying value, you need to format the cells as text (for instance, zip codes). You can't do math with text (not easily, anyway) -- it's normally for ID's and zips, etc.

HTH

MS Online basics on custom formats:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP051995001033.aspx

 

[lenze]

Hi and welcome to the board!!!
My good friend Smitty gave you the practicle answer. You can, however, use Custom Formatting. Format>Cells>Number Tab. Choose Custom for category and for type enter as many zeros as you want. (Ex 000000). This will display the number with leading zeros, and you don't have to type them in. Excel will figure it out. The advandage is the cell still contains a number for calculation purposes. With my above format, entering 7486 will display as 007486

lenze

 

[dyaron]

TEXT("your desired number", "0000000") also works.

For instance, if I wanted a 5 digit number, that had 2 leading zeros, and I wanted the zeros to stay, it would be as such:

=text(123, "00000") = 00123