TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Leading Zeros?

Re: Leading Zeros?

AES (siegman@stanford.edu)
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 17:21:44 -0800

In article <telecom24.72.1@telecom-digest.org>,
bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote:

>> citations to work properly. A few quick tests show that the default
>> behavior is to automatically and irretrievably discard leading zeros
>> on integer numbers keyed into an Excel worksheet cell or a Mathematic
>> list.

> Note: *BAD* test.

> You can select the 'formatting' on a cell, column, or entire
> worksheet, to display numbers with leading zeroes. If you treat the
> cell data as a 'number', it will be 'left filled' with zeroes to the
> number of positions you specify.

> If you treat the cell as *TEXT* then _exactly_ what you enter =will=
> be preserved.

I just once again opened Excel: Mac 2004, selected a cell at random,
typed in "0038", and hit the Enter key. The selection dropped down to
the cell below and left "38" displayed in the cell in which I'd made
the entry. I re-selected that cell and looked at the entry field up
above where the contents are displayed; it also held "38".

I then played some with the "Number" formats for that cell, and was
unable to find any kind of Custom number format that gave me back the
leading zeros -- but maybe I missed something??? (The "ZIP Code" format
did give me leading zeros: "00038" to be specific, but I don't think
that would be helpful.)

In any case, I think my statement above as to the __default__ behavior
of Excel is correct ... ?

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