Excel Question

[Shangri-laschild]

I have no clue how to turn off a certain correction feature in Microsoft Excel. Whenever I type in something like 0001 it corrects it to 1. The zeros are in there for a reason though. How do I stop it from taking the zeros out each time? I'd like it to in general just leave the numbers alone and stop changing what I type in but keep getting stuck as far as the how. The exact version I'm using is Microsoft Office Excel 2007 which I have been generally unimpressed with anyway. The tools menu is gone and things seem to be spread out and organized differently now.

[CorDarei]

are you trying to keep it a number that will add to something? or are you just trying to keep the 0's in there so you can see them.


If it's the latter, you can right click the cell(s) and do the format cell option, then select Number tab (most likely default) and select Text as the format of the cell.

or you could do a custom #, and have the 0's added automatically to the # you type in (so if you want 3 leading zeros, set the custom format to be 0000) would be 0004 if you typed in 4 for that cell... or 00025 if you typed in 25.. then you could sum them up...


*edit*
custom #, not customer #

[Yfandes]

or you can put a ' in front of your zeros. (thats the lower case version of the " next to my right enter key on my keyboard). They wont sum, so I think they are text.

[Shangri-laschild]

are you trying to keep it a number that will add to something? or are you just trying to keep the 0's in there so you can see them.


If it's the latter, you can right click the cell(s) and do the format cell option, then select Number tab (most likely default) and select Text as the format of the cell.

or you could do a custom #, and have the 0's added automatically to the # you type in (so if you want 3 leading zeros, set the custom format to be 0000) would be 0004 if you typed in 4 for that cell... or 00025 if you typed in 25.. then you could sum them up...


*edit*
custom #, not customer #

The key program I use orders numbers weird so hook numbers would get listed as such:
1
10
11
12
2
20
etc

Since I want them to be ordered correctly, I put the 0s in front and just number everything from 0001-9999 and that fixes it. I want my key lists to look the same so that it's easier for me to read. Tried the 1st suggestion and it worked perfectly! Thanks.

[Naaman]

Sounds like you have the cell set up as text, it's rearranged them "alphabetically". As long as you're only putting numbers in then just R Click the column header (letter), choose format cells and change to Number. If you're only going to be using whole numbers then set 'decimal places' to 0 otherwise they'll read 1.00, 11.00 etc.