How can I format a TXT file so that, when opened in Excel by double clicking, the numbers retain leading zeros

Question

Hi. The key point here is that you can't take actions in Excel to do this (as once you have opened the file it has already lost the zeroes. I need to change the format of the actual TXT file.

Adding a ' keeps the ' showing in the Excel document sadly... so this doesn't seem to work...

Hi. Adding " does not solve the issue.

Hi, Yes, Sadly, I need to get users to double click it. They can't use excel consistently enough and the system will be using these files (plus data entered) to process automated into another database, so, sadly, yes they do need to double click,

Answer 1

Mark the cells containing numbers as text.

Right Click the cell containing the numbers
Select Format Cells
Select Text from the 'Numbers' tab
Click ok

Hopefully this should do.

Answer 2

Do you need to open the document by double-clicking?
You could open from the file menu. Excel will ask you whether the file is "delimited" (has columns separated by a character - normally tab or comma) or "fixed-width" (all the columns are the same number of digits.
Select fixed-width, Next, move/create/delete column lines (I'm guessing you'd need to delete them all - do this by double-clicking on them), Next, highlight the columns you want to retain the zeroes on and make sure the "column data" radio button is set to text, click finish and you should have the fil opened with leading zeroes

Answer 3

You have to add a single quote before the number... for example if the text file contains 000000123, make it '000000123. In excel it will initially show you the leading ', but if you double click in the cell that contains '0000000123 (after the txt is opened in excel), the ' will disappear.

HTH

Answer 4

I extremely have written quite a few purposes that output worker identity numbers and those numbers have 3 maximum well known zeros. that's complicated to handle because of the fact that Excel will constantly guess on the records sort and you could no longer tell it any in yet differently while exporting. My suggestion is to apply a definite character (like the only quote) in front of the sphere fee, which will constantly make the main well known zeros look. Then tell your different application interpreting it to bypass the 1st character. i've got performed this many cases interior the previous and it variety of feels to paintings nicely. Your different determination, of direction, is to manually upload the zeros. Yuck. solid success!

Answer 5

You may change the format of the entire column to Text, but numbers that have already been entered while the format was general will retain the original format.

You will have to reenter the numbers as text.

Answer 6

Put a ' before the numbers in the .txt file and import in General format.

Answer 7

right click on the top of column eg C and then click on text

Answer 8

Put quotes around everything, maybe?