I'm using Excel 2003 and trying to convert a file to a CSV file... when I
save it as a CSV file it drops the leading zeros on a column that is numbers
stored as text.

I've stored the numbers as text in Excel using three methods:
1 - they all start with a ' as in '00123 '00124
2 - under Format Cells, I've selected Text
3 - under Data Text to Columns I've selected the column data format as text.

When I save as CSV file and then reopen it using Excel, it drops my zeros. I
have also heard that I should change the file extension to .txt, but when I
do this, it just changes it to .txt.csv and the zeros are still dropped.

When I save the same CSV file as a notepad, the zeros are there, but when I
open the notepad file in Excel, the zeros are dropped.

Any suggestions??