Merging cells without losing zeros

[mrwd40]

This is driving me insane b/c it seems so simple but I just cant seem to figure it out. I need a formula that will allow me to combine the 2-digit contents of A with the 2-digit contents of B so C contains all 4-digits. The problem I'm having is that the preceding "0" are getting dropped off and I need the "0"s to remain unchanged.

So I'm just trying to get column C to be an exact combination of A and B. See attached file for example.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[shg]

Format cols A and B as Text, change the strings back to two digits each, and then catenate in C2 as =A2 & B2

Or leave cols A and B as they are, and catenate as =TEXT(A2, "00") & TEXT(B2, "00")

[mrwd40]

Thanks for the help shg! Didn't totally follow Option 1 but Option 2 worked.

One more question though: If I wanted to jump to a specific number in column C, for example 2104, I thought I could do FIND: 2104 but everything in C appears to be unsearchable. Anything I can do to resolve that?

Thanks again for all the help!