Format a cell as an IP address with no leading 0s and restricting "octets" to max of 255

I need to format a pretty simple table (8 columns, 6 rows) of cells to restrict the input to an IP address format. The output cannot have "leading 0s" -- so the number count might be different based on the particular IP address (for example, the addresses could be 123.12.1.1234 for one and 12.1234.1.12 for another). This will be a customer-facing input form -- so we're looking to make it as error-proof as possible by restricting the values to a format requirement/validation.

1. Is there a way to format the cell to "force" the structure that would reflect four octets for an IP address and still be flexible on the number of digits per octet?
2. Is there a way to prevent or alert if any of the octet "segments" are > 255 (the max on the IP range)?

It is acceptable if I need to separate an individual IP address into individual columns for each octet, but was hoping to find a way to deliver each IP in a single cell... I'm just looking for a somewhat elegant solution to make the input as error-proof as possible. The initial form is attached, and I'm open to structural suggestions as long as the output appearsIP address question.xlsx similar to what we see here. Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi,

I've tried entering the above formula in Excel2010 but it's too long for the formula box. Am I missing something here?

Cheers,

Jon C