retain leading zeros when importing

[Guest]

I am importing several thousand records from a web based database into excel.
I have to combine some records and then dump the data into another database.
The dataset set contains part numbers with leading zeros.

How do I get Excel to retain the leading zeros? I've read numerous posts on
how to change the cell format to display a leading zero, however, the actual
cell value does not inlcude this zero and I need it retained for import into
the next database. I've tried saving the HTM as a text file and importing,
however, the file is not delimited and the cell lenght varies so this is a
non-starter.

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Lee,
Change the file extension from .csv to .txt so that the text import wizard comes
up which will give you a chance to indicate that the column is to be text.

If that does not work then prefix the data with a letter, and remove the prefixed
letter form the column once in Excel after you set up the format the way you wnat it.