Hi

using a custom formal only changes the display of the numbers, not the
numbers themselves - which is why when you import them into access or
whatever, the numbers will lose the formatting.

the solution (AFAIK) is not to use a custom format but to change the numbers
to text with the leading zeros as part of the "number"
ie. say you have the number 100 in A1 and you want to see 00000100 instead
in B1 type
=REPT("0",8-LEN(A1))&A1

fill this formula down the column
then you can select this column, copy it and use edit / paste special values
to paste this over the original numbers and then delete this column.

Cheers
JuileD


"yesterdaytoday11" wrote in
message ...
I have data in one column that must always be 8 numbers, leading zeros are
at least two and at most 5, I have formatted them with the custom number
format 00000### but when I import the file into Access (get external data)
,
Access will drop all leading zeros. I do not see an option to import a
.prn
file into Access.