Have you tried formatting the cells as SSN?

If your column of numbers are true numbers,
Select the column, then,
<Format <Cells <Number tab,
Click on "Special" in the left window,
Then click on "Social Security Number" in the right window.

This will *add* leading 0's and dashes.

If your numbers are 'Text',
Right click in a new, empty, unused cell, and choose "Copy",
Select the column of numbers and right click in the selection,
Choose "Paste Special",
Then click on "Add", then <OK.

You NOW have true numbers, so you can now format as above, to SSN.
--
HTH,

RD

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"Allan" wrote in message
...

Timm...I will experiment with your solution too...you guys are good.
Thanks
"tim m" wrote:

After a bit of experimentaion this seemed to do the job.

=CONCATENATE("0",LEFT(A1,2),"-",MID(A1,3,2),"-",RIGHT(A1,4))

"Allan" wrote:

I have a spreadsheet that has social security numbers (SSN) in a
column. The
numbers are missing the leading zeros and the two dashes for the SSN
format
(i.e. the number is XXXXXXXX instead of 0XX-XX-XXXX. If you look in the
cell,
the you see only 8 numbers, but when you format you of course see the
SSN
format...000-00-0000. I need to add the leading zero and then the two
dashes
(this because I am transferring the numbers to another software
package).

My data set is large..manual entry will take forever.

Any ideas are welcome.