zip code formatting

[MLD]

A user had a weird issue the other day. She received an Excel table full of
names and addresses. Not so weird. But the person who generated it did not
use a consistent format in the Zip Code field, so the zips beginning with
zero, were all Smart Tagged as "this cell is formatted as text or has an
apostrophe in it'. And they did - in a mixed manner. When my user tried to
make mailing labels, those beginning with zero only populated the label zip
field with a '0'. I tried everything, clearing the formats of the column,
resetting, copying and pasting as plain text, using the Special Format -
Zip Code setting, using Text format on all - nothing worked to get accurate
output on the labels.

As anyone seen this? What did I miss?

Thanks,
-Monica

 

[Excel_Geek]

Sometimes when this (or similar number v. text that is a number) happens
to me, I type a "1" in a free cell, copy it, and paste special ->
multiply the array of zip codes by the "1". This should convert all to
number. The ones starting "0----" may only show the last four digits
until you reformat the cells as zip codes.

Give it a try...