beginning zeros won't hold in field when saving as .CSV

H

Heather

When saving an Excel spreadsheet as a .CSV (comma delimited) file, beginning
zeros dissapear. The only way I know to keep the zeros is to format the
field as 'text.' However, .CSV files wipe out all formatting. Is there a
way to KEEP the zero in the number '08' instead of '8' when saving as .CSV!?
Please send suggestions. It would be appreciated. Thank you.
 
M

mzehr

Hi Heather,
After you save your file as a csv, go into Windows Explorer and change the
extension to .txt. Then when you open the file in Excel, use the comma
delimited format feature, then select the columns you want formatted as text,
you will find the leading zeros will be there. By the way, there is a
fantastic utility out there called ASAP utilities by Bastien Mensink, that
has as one of its functions, the ability to quickly change all numbers in a
range to have leading zeros:

http://www.asap-utilities.com/
 
D

Dave Peterson

And after you've saved the workbook as .csv, try opening that in NotePad.

It's actually the reopening of the .csv file that gets rid of those leading 0's.

So if you need the .csv file for another program, you may be ok.
 
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