zero suppression on opening .xls file

[don]

If I create a tab delimited file as .xls , when I click on the file to open
it exel automatically suppresse the leading zeros on numeric fields. If i
invoke excel first and then open the file it allows me to specify the
numeric fields as 'text' and doesn't suppress the zero's. If i save the file
and then doulble click on the file to open it ,everything is ok. What do I
have to do so that excel will open the the tab delimited file the first time
and not suppres the leading zero's?

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you really save the file as a normal workbook with a .xls extension, then
excel knows how to treat each field--it's saved the formatting, the values,
everything.

If you save a text file with a .xls extension, then excel will only have the
values. And there is no difference between 0000123 and 123. So excel just
displays the value in a General format.

If you want to keep the 0's, you can either File|open the text file and go
through the data import wizard or you can apply a custom format after you import
your data.