If formatting doen't help you can use ="000"&A1
Where A1 is the number that won't hold its lead zeroes

I've used the following for 5 digits zip codes when mail
merge in Word won't hold the lead zeroes in the Northeast
(US)
=IF(LEN(A1)<2,0,"")&IF(LEN(A1)<3,0,"")&IF(LEN(A1)< 4,0,"")
&IF(LEN(A1)<5,0,"")&A1

If any you wish to improve this please post it.

-----Original Message-----
I'm sure this must be a basic question: I need to have
numbers in a
particular column which begin with three leading zeros as
in 000123 but
Excel automatically discards them. I can't find a format
in the number
category which retains them. How do I do it please?

Thanks


.