David Ritchie answered my problem in an earlier response to another
question:-

QUOTE
But formatting after entry does not change a number to text, nor text to
a number so changing the format would have no effect until reentered.
Reentering would remove leading zeros at least in Excel 2002.
UNQUOTE

Thanks David

Steve

"42410" wrote in message
...
As a further rider to this problem, I have also had a problem trying to
sort
a column of numbers when some of them start with a zero. I've tried
formatting the cells as text, general, number and custom. None of them
seem
to give consistantly correct sorting. What's the best way? Can anyone
advise?

(Sorry to piggy-back on someone else's posting, but my problem is in the
same context).


"David McRitchie" wrote in message
...
Hi Trisha,
You might find some help and solutions with sorting problems in
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/sorting.htm

Excel more or less follows the ASCII collating sequence (number order of
SNIP