Leading zeros disappear when saving as .csv

T

Theodore Bartley

Hi,

How can I enter telephone numbers so that the leading zero doesn't get
removed by Excel. I know I can enter numbers preceded by an apostrophe.
This would be ok if I were leaving the file as .xls, but as soon as I save
it as .csv, which I need to do, the zeros get stripped off.

I know also that I can set up a custom number 00000000 (or whatever) but
then the length is fixed, and unfortunately not all phone numbers have the
same length.

So how can I enter numbers of variable length with leading zeros that do not
get stripped off neither in .xls files nor .csv files.

(Of course if I handle the .csv files with Notepad rather than Excel I don't
have a problem with the zeroes. But I then lose all the funtionality of
Excel).

Thanks,
Theo
 
T

Theodore Bartley

oops,

I should also have mentioned that formatting the numbers as text doesn't
help either.

Theo
 
T

tjtjjtjt

Try Formatting the cells that will have the numbers as Text before you put
numbers in them. It worked with the few lines of sample data I tried in Excel
2003 and then opening the file with Notepad.

tj
 
D

David McRitchie

Hi Theo,
Actually the zeros are removed when you open the file in Excel.
You can change the file extension to .txt and the import wizard
give you options. You would choose delimited, and on the
next screen choose comma, watch out for the checkbox
for duplicate delimiters you don't want that option checked.

Then you choose which columns are text.
 
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