Leading zeros not showing

I've got some fils, no matter how I open t I alwasy lose the leading zeros,
whic are actually VERY important.

I know I can format the relevant cells to be 6 digits long, this is fine,
but not al of the data is that format. Some can be 5 digits, some 13. So
using "Format Cells" is't going to work.

When I look at the data in Notepad the numbers are fine, eg., 002659a, but
this is only shown as 2659a in Excel. Like I said the next line might have
"428" so I can't just format the cells for 7 digits as "428" would c0me out
as "0000428" which would be wrong.

All I need is for Excel to stop making decisions for me & to just show the
data that is there. Anyone know how to do this?

Hi Mike,
I think the only way around it is to format the cells as text.
Ken Johnson

When I have the situation like yours I usually use the apostraphe ' before the number. This tells Excel to format the cell as text and not numbers. The ' doesnt show when you enter it by hand. It does show if you are copying data from another source. All you need to do is click on the edit line of each of the cells that are showing and hit enter, it then disappears.