Keeping Leading Zeroes

[EmmaG1959]

Usual apologies if this is dumb q, I am not a power user, Excel is simply a means to an end for me!

OK.... Column A contains product codes. These are of the format: 123/1234, i.e. 3 digits, a slash, 4 digits

In order to get records into my database, I need to remove the slash, so there are just 7 digits (the match field is structured this way in the database). Unfortunately, some product codes have leading zeros, e.g. 058/1234. Even if I format the cells as 'text', removing the slash changes the cell content to '581234'. How can I make it still say '0581234'?

I just noticed that if I delete an individual slash manually, the zeroes are retained. How can I make it behave like this for a whole column at a time?

Thanks!

[sweep]

Hi,

If you use this formula in column B after formatting it to text...

=LEFT(A1,3)&RIGHT(A1,4)

Your leading zeros should remain!

[EmmaG1959]

That works, thanks... But trouble is this is a file supplied by our customer. I am trying to automate importing it into a database. At present I have to do this myself - I am happy manipulating the data and doing quite a few intermediate steps. But the database users need to be able to do it virtually 'at the push of a button'.

Inserting a column would change the structure. I suppose they could paste those values back into column A and delete column B, but I was trying to keep it really simple for the users.

If the end users were on Macs, I guess I could Applescript the whole process (though it sounds scary!), but unfortunately that's not a solution.

Is it really not possible to just tell a Microsoft product 'I want these zeroes, stop trying to be clever for once!'