select the column/range that contains leading zeros
then on menu go to
data--text to columns--
delimited
Next
next
and hit Finish,

This will convert all those cells to numbers

OR

type 1 on an emplty cell
select that cell and hit ctrl C
Now select the column/range
edit paste special values and Multiply



"Vanessa" wrote in message
...
I have downloaded data from another source and the customer numbers are of
different numeric lengths (ex- 345 and 34567). Excel preceeded the
numbers
with zeros to make the character length equal to 8. How to I drop the
preceeding zeros?

Thanks!