Format 000-00000-00000-000 and recognize leading zeros in Excel?

[Peo Sjoblom]

Excel has only 15 digits precision so you can't use that as a numericial
format

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Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

Excel 95 - Excel 2007
Northwest Excel Solutions
www.nwexcelsolutions.com
"It is a good thing to follow the first law of holes;
if you are in one stop digging." Lord Healey

 

[Jackie Kohlman]

I need to keep the leading zeros and the hyphens. Is there a way to do this?

 

[Dave Peterson]

preformat the cell as text and type all the 0's and hyphens

(or start your entry with an apostrophe:
'001-00234-00012-123

 

[Jackie Kohlman]

I am copying data from a SQL database into an excel ss. I must preformat the
cells of the ss that the data is being pasted to. This method still does not
keep the leading zeros. I am trying to eliminate the need to retype 4000+
numbers. Any suggestions?

 

[Dave Peterson]

Are you simply copying and pasting?

I've pasted into Notepad, saved that file, then used file|open to bring in that
data. I could specify text as the field type when I brought in that field.

 

[Saruman]

Go to Format, Cells, Custom

Type in the exact string you want with the zeros and the hyphens and click
ok

Any data entered will then be in that format

Saruman