The Downward Spiral

if you have a barcode like 047995855086, then the leading 0 is important to have there

unfortunately, excel, in it’s infinite wisdom, will not keep that leading 0 there unless the format of the cell is Text…

so, that should be easy right?  If you have a spreadsheet with 047995855086 in there, and copy it to a cell formatted as Text, it will STILL drop the leading 0.

The magic is you have to paste it from a “text source” (I’m calling it) like Notepad.

so let’s say you have a huge column of 12 digit barcodes (with no spaces or dashes or anything).. all the leading 0′s are dropped.

First apply a Custom Formatting to all the cells and put in 12 0′s … wowzors… now we have leading 0′s.. well, you can SEE leading zeros.. but if you were to copy a cell or reference it or whatever, guess what? … leading 0′s dropped

soooo .. now copy that column… and paste in to NOTEPAD… ah ha.. magic sauce is brewing!

now, back in the Excel, change that column’s format to Text … leading zero’s are dropped, but the stage is set

back in notepad, copy everything and paste back in to excel… leading zeros really there (for real) and the cell has a little green triangle in the corner.. you may even get a warning cuz OMFG you have LEADING ZEROS!!!

but.. that’s what you want… you win! do a happy dance!