Stop leading zeros disappearing in spreadsheets

摘要

Both Excel and Calc try to help out by removing what they believe to be unnecessary leading zeros from cells containing numbers (021, for example). However, sometimes you actually want these leading zeros - for example, when entering phone numbers or product codes. There are several ways to prevent this happening, but the easiest is to simply add an apostrophe at the start of your number. For example, type '007 into a cell and, when you press Enter, the apostrophe will disappear, leaving just 007. The apostrophe tells Excel and Calc to format the cell as plain text, but you can still use the cells in formulas (for example, when calculating the sum of a group of cells).