Advanced Filter or Autofilter to filter numbers?

Have spent a good while researching this and haven't found anything.

All I "simply" want to do is use auto filter and advanced filter to filter a column of numbers based on the first digits.

For example, let's say I have a column of data such as:-

177990
177346
189344
905343
177343
905454


I want to enter criteria such that I select all the rows that begin with "177".

You might have thought this was easy and just need to use 177* with the "begin with" auto filter statement or "=177*" with advanced filter. However, both criteria select nothing.

After a little testing I realised this is because excel must store the numbers as numbers (i.e. not strings). So if I insert a ' in all columns the above criteria works but NOT if I use the criteria as above.
The *silly* thing is if I try to match the whole number (not just first 3 digits") the criteria works fine.

Now, surely I'm missing something simple here and there is a way to filter part of a number?

Thanks!

thanks for work-around tip and there are a few others I could do.

just seemed like I'm definitely missing something as there should be a way to do this.....???

Work-arounds are also quite a pain considering what I'm trying to achieve.