Stop Excel from dropping the lead zero I want to stop Excel from dropping the leading zero, permanently and forever. I know I can format as text and or put in some special number formatting, but the data I work with this quickly becomes a pain. I'm using Excel for the first time and I cannot keep zeros from being deleted when I enter them at the begining of a set of numbers ie.
![How To Keep Leading Zeros In Excel For Mac How To Keep Leading Zeros In Excel For Mac](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124888611/849631257.png)
When I transfer data to an Excel spreadsheet it drops the leading zero of any numerical data. How can I fix this
- I want to thank you for the efforts you have contributed in composing this article.
- Tom,did you solve the issue with the leading zero following the advice above? Please let us know what worked for you. Thank you!
- One solution is to put a non-breaking space ( ) in the cell. This
instructs Excel to treat the data as text. You can also use specific style
attributes that Excel recognizes, such as mso-number-format. This example
imposes a 5-digit mask on the numeric cell contents:Select the cells you want to keep the leading zero's, Press CTRL 1, select the 'Number' tab, then select 'text'You can highlight an entire column or row, then select Format / cells / text.Specifically, this tells Excel not to try to interpret the entered values but rather to leave them as text. It's also handy when entering something that could be interpreted as either a formula or a date.Excel Dropping Leading Zeros
HTML TRick
http://successontheweb.blogspot.com/2007/09/excel-dropping-leading-zeros.html - Tom,did you try to format the cells in your spreadsheet that you're transferring data to beforehand?What version of Excel are you using?