Losing leading 0 when saving as .csv

[Mark Christensen]

Hello,

I've got Excel 2002. I've got an address file that I need to save as a .csv
file. In the file are ZIP codes that begin with 0. These leading 0's are
being dropped when I save as a .csv file. Here's what I've tried so far to
keep the leading 0's in .csv:

1) In the .xls file, selected the ZIP column (column G) and formated the
cells as Text. Then saved as .xls and then saved as .csv. When I then open
the .csv file, the leading 0's are missing. If I open the .xls file, the
leading 0's are intact.
2) After opening the .csv file created in step 1, I again select the ZIP
column (G) and format the cells from General to Text. I then manually add
the missing 0 to the affected rows and save as .csv. I then close the .csv
and reopen it and the leading 0's are missing. I reselect the column to
check the formatting of the cells. The column has reverted back to General
even though I changed it to Text.

What am I doing wrong?

More importantly, how do I keep the leading 0's in the .csv file?

Thanks.

Mark

 

[Mark Christensen]

I just did some more googling and discovered the missing 0's are in fact
present in the .csv file - they just aren't showing when I open the .csv
file in Excel. I opened it in Notepad and the leading 0's were there, so I
guess chalk this one up to operator error! Thanks.

Mark

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

I just did some more googling and discovered the missing 0's are in fact
present in the .csv file - they just aren't showing when I open the .csv
file in Excel. I opened it in Notepad and the leading 0's were there, so I
guess chalk this one up to operator error! Thanks.

Chalk it up to formatting You cleverly saved the data as text, but when
XL reopened it, it saw only numbers and assumed they were ? You can tell it
that your data is text IIRC.

Good news anyway