Editing a cell in Excel spreadsheet

[nnorris]

HI,
I am using Excel on windows 10. When our mailing list was transferred from another computer it didn't save the zeros on the zip code. When I try to put them in, it won't save them. What is wrong?

Thanks,
Nancy

 

[Abraham Andres Luna]

It sounds like you are trying to save the zip code as a raw number. Excel will remove the leading zeros because it doesn't need them to represent the number. If you want to save a zip code with zeros you have to wrap it in apostrophes like this '00790'

 

[Becky]

Agreed, although technically you only need to put one apostrophe (at the start). This is also useful when you want a formula to appear as text - eg '=1+2 would appear as =1+2 rather than 3.

If you don't want to edit an apostrophe into each cell, you can achieve the same thing by formatting the cells as text - right click on the highlighted cells, select Format Cells, then choose the 'Text' option from the category list.