hi
you don't. AND keep the leading zeros.
mathmaticly leading zeros are unnecessary so excel strips them off and the
"number" becomes a true number. now can do mathmatical things to it like add,
divide, ect.
"numbers" with leading zeros are usually identification nomenclatures such
as part "numbers" or phone "numbers" or SS "numbers" and you usually don't
want to do mathmatical things to them. have you ever had a reason to divide
your phone number by 2 or add 1 to your street address. these are not true
numbers. they are IDs.
i have seen many posts from individuls want to know how to add leading zeros
to some id number they have and the responce is always the same. Pre-format
the cell as text or preceed the entry with an apostrophe.
the apostrophe is only visible in the formula bar. is there any reason why
this is perticularly offensive to you???
regards
FSt1