How to prevent Excel from removing leading zeros

Is it frustrating to automatically remove leading zeros from Excel workbooks? When you enter a number into a cell, Excel often removes the leading zeros in front of the number. By default, it treats cell entries that lack explicit formatting as numeric values. Leading zeros are generally considered irrelevant in number formats and are therefore omitted. Additionally, leading zeros can cause problems in certain numerical operations. Therefore, zeros are automatically removed.

This article will teach you how to retain leading zeros in Excel to ensure that the entered numeric data such as account numbers, zip codes, phone numbers, etc. are in the correct format.

In Excel, how to allow numbers to have zeros in front of them?

You can preserve leading zeros of numbers in an Excel workbook, there are several methods to choose from. You can achieve this by formatting the cells or using the text function of the target cell. Additionally, you can write a VBA script to prevent Excel from automatically formatting cell values ​​and removing leading zeros. These methods can help ensure that your numeric data remains intact without losing leading zeros due to Excel's automatic processing.

How to prevent Excel from removing leading zeros

If you want to prevent Excel from removing leading zeros in your workbook, use the following method:

1]Add an apostrophe before the number

One of the easiest ways to stop Excel from removing leading zeros is to insert an apostrophe before the actual number. The number will be displayed without the apostrophe symbol.

While this basic approach works well for small data sets, adding commas manually can become tedious and error-prone, especially when dealing with large amounts of text or data input. Therefore, in this case, we can consider other more efficient methods to solve this problem.

Read: How to get real-time currency exchange rates in Excel?

2]Set cells to text format

Another way to prevent leading zeros from being removed in Excel is to put single quotes before leading zeros when entering numbers. This ensures that leading zeros are preserved in the cells and are not automatically removed by Excel.

• First, select the target cells or entire columns in the workbook and right-click them.
• Next, click the Format Cells option from the context menu. To open the Format Cells dialog box, you can also use the CTRL 1 shortcut key.
• After that, under the Number tab, select the Text category from the Number tab.
• Finally, click the OK button to save the changes.

See: How to remove scientific notation in Excel?

3]Set custom format

You can also use a custom format to enter a number code of no more than 16 digits in Excel, such as social security, postal code, etc.

• First, select the cell in question and press the CTRL 1 key combination to open the cell formatting prompt.
• Under the Numbers tab, click the Custom category.
• In the type box, type the number format, for example, 000-00-0000, 00000, etc.
• When finished, press the OK button to save the new format.

Read: How to lock cells in Excel formulas?

4]Use special format

Excel has some built-in formats for entering numeric codes, including zip codes, phone numbers, and social security numbers. Therefore, to enter a specific type of number, you can use the corresponding format. To do this, select the cell and press CTRL 1. Then, select the special category and select the desired type from the available categories. Once finished, press the OK button to save changes.

5]&Use the get conversion function

If you import a dataset from an external file, you can use the Get Transform feature to prevent Excel from removing leading zeros. Source files can be in text, XML, Web, JSON, etc. formats.

Here’s how to do it:

First, open your Excel workbook and go to the "Data" tab.

Now, click on the Get Data drop-down button and select the From File From Text/CSV option or the file format you want to import.

Next, browse for the input file and click the Import button to import the file.

In the opened dialog box, press the "Convert Data" button.

After that, in the Power Query editor window. Select the column you want to edit and go to the "Convert" menu.

Now, click on the Data Type button and select Text.

In the "Change Column Type" prompt, click the "Replace Current Column" button and let Excel convert the selected column data format to text.

When finished, press the Close and Load buttons to return to Excel.

Imported datasets will now contain leading zeros.

You can use the data refresh function to automatically update data.

Read: How to add camera tool in Excel?

5]Apply text function

Another way to preserve leading zeros in Excel is to use the TEXT function. For example, if you want to insert the social security code in the E1 community, you can use the "=Text(E1,"000-00-0000")" function. Likewise, you can use this function in other numeric codes.

If you execute the command on an Excel function, you can also use a function other than the TEXT function to preserve leading zeros. Here are some examples of such functions:

• Combination of REPT and LEN functions, such as "=REPT(0,5-LEN(A5))&A5"
• CONCATENATE function, for example, =CONCATENATE("00",A5)
• Right function with ampersand operator (&), such as "=Right("00000"&A5, 5)"

Similarly, there are other functions available for the same purpose.

Read: How to add text to cells in Excel using formulas?

How to open Excel without losing leading zeros?

If you want to try to import an existing Excel file into the workbook without removing the leading zeros, go to the Data tab and click the Get data from Excel workbook from file option. Now, select the source file, press the Import button and click on Convert Data. Next, select the target column, go to the Transform tab, and set the data type to Text.

Now read: How to open Apple Numbers file in Excel?

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