Social Security Numbers & Leading Zeros

[Guest]

I imported over 3000 records that are tied to social security numbers. The
SS numbers come in as text and I need to change them to numbers. How do I do
this and retain leading zeros?

 

[David McRitchie]

Wasn't aware that social security numbers could begin with a zero
they must have changed things. In any case you want to use text
for such identifying "numbers".

The usual problem reported is with credit card numbers that are
16 digits and Excel only handles 15 significant digits so you must
use TEXT or suffer the consequences of unbillable "numbers"
since the last digit (a hash digit) becomes zero...

 

[Dave Peterson]

One way.

Select an empty cell
copy it
select your SSN's.
edit|Paste special|Add

Now format those SSN's
Format|Cells|Number Tab|Special|SSN