Bob

Maintaining a leading zero requires either customs formatting or data entry
as text.
Taking the latter first, entering ' as the first digit causes Excel to
recognise data as text. Example '01 will show as 01. Disadvantage: no
mathematical calculations.

Formatting only changes the way users see the result. There is a good
explanation on the page below.
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=146

Steve

"bob" wrote in message
...
i am entering a set of numbers in a colum and the first diget is 0, how do
you keep that o showing when you go to the next cell?