As has been pointed out, if you leave the dash (-) in, the cell will be
treated as text.

To force Excel to treat the cell as text, put an apostrophe at the start

e.g.
0123 will produce 123
'0123 will produce 0123

you can still treat the 0123 result as a number for the purpose of
arithmetic functions.

--
Cheers,
RyanR

--- pls click yes if I''ve helped you ---


"Shane Devenshire" wrote:

Hi,

In all versions of Excel to enter 01-2345678 in a cell without loosing the
leading zeros, type 01-2345678

So, its not clear what your problem is because all you need to do is type
what you are showing and it goes in and displays as you want it.

Leading 0's are only a problem when you enter something as a number and when
you type 01-2345678 it is not a number, because of the -

--
If this helps, please click the Yes button.

Cheers,
Shane Devenshire


"Dave" wrote:

Hi All,

I have an issue with formating cells. I have a permit number that has
leading zeros sometimes, so I must display them when entered. I have
tried 0?-??????? and 0#-####### but no luck. Heres is what my permit
number look
01-2345678 & 02-8765432.


thanks,

Dave