Excel won't accept leading zero's

[Robster61]

Hi everyone, I am brand spanking new to this forum and a novice excel user. At my work we have Excel 2003 installed. I can use excel to upload my orders to my vendor. I thought I would try that today. I created a sheet which has as headings in the first row: Column 1 named SKU, Column 2 named Qty., and Column 3 named Retail. Some of my SKU numbers contain a leading zero(example 0035678). When I put in the leading zero and hit enter it drops the leading zero and now I only have a 6 digit SKU instead of a 7 digit SKU. The website will not accept the SKU because of that error. I have tried everything to format but to no avail. I am sure there is a way around this. Can anyone help? Thanks guys.

 

[RoryA]

Hi, and welcome!
If you format the column as Text (select the column, choose Format-Cells from the menu, then on the Number tab, choose Text) before entering the data, you should keep your leading zeroes.

 

[Peter_SSs]

Hi everyone, I am brand spanking new to this forum and a novice excel user. At my work we have Excel 2003 installed. I can use excel to upload my orders to my vendor. I thought I would try that today. I created a sheet which has as headings in the first row: Column 1 named SKU, Column 2 named Qty., and Column 3 named Retail. Some of my SKU numbers contain a leading zero(example 0035678). When I put in the leading zero and hit enter it drops the leading zero and now I only have a 6 digit SKU instead of a 7 digit SKU. The website will not accept the SKU because of that error. I have tried everything to format but to no avail. I am sure there is a way around this. Can anyone help? Thanks guys.

Welcome to the MrExcel board!

One way is to format the column a Text before entering the values.

 

[VoG]

Hello and welcome to MrExcel.

Select the cells > Format > Cells > Custom > 0000000

Does that work?

 

[Robster61]

Wow. That was quick and also.......right! That did it for me. Thanks so much. I can see I will be using this forum quite a bit

 

[Robster61]

yep, it worked. Thanks for your reply. It will be a big help finding this forum.