How do you stop Excel from suppressing the leading zeros in a cell used for a
barcode that is created using a cell that has them?

Try applying a custom number format.
Format|Cells... choose the Number tab. Click on Custom and enter as
format 000000
(or as many digits as you want).

HTH
Kostis Vezerides

Thanks for your reply, but that does not help. I already have that in place.

"vezerid" wrote:

Try applying a custom number format.
Format|Cells... choose the Number tab. Click on Custom and enter as
format 000000
(or as many digits as you want).

HTH
Kostis Vezerides

I am rereading your original post and I am now confused. Probably
because there is a certain package for barcodes I am not aware of.

Is there a chance that TEXT(number, "000000") will help you? Beyond
this I am running out of suggestions. Maybe, if you give details of the
application you are using and post in another Excel group (e.g.
programming) you will get a better answer.

Regards,
Kostis Vezerides

"PHELM1" wrote...
How do you stop Excel from suppressing the leading zeros in a cell used for
a
barcode that is created using a cell that has them?

More details needed. How are you putting these values into cells? By typing
them into cells formatted numerically with leading zeros? If so, are you
then applying a barcode font to such cells? If so, then it's a mystery, but
if there are other steps between entry of values and representation as bar
codes, you need to specify those steps.

If you are using a bar code font, you cannot just select the text in
the cell and change its font to a bar code font and expect to get a
readable bar code. All bar code symbologies require special start and
stop codes and most also require a check character that is calculated
and appended to the symbol's main data.
The Code 39 symbology is the only one that I know of that does not use
a check digit however it does require start and stop codes which are
usually represented by asterisks. If you put an asterisk at the
beginning and at the end of the data that you want to apply a Code 39
bar code font to, the asterisks will also cause Excel to treat the
data as a text string and therefore not format it as a number. You
will also get readable bar codes with the correct start and stop
patterns.

In general bar code fonts are not only tricky to use, they also
produce relatively poor quality bar codes. If you want to produce high
quality bar codes in Excel, Access or any other program without having
to write macros or monkey with your data, the best tool to use is a
good bar code ActiveX control. The best one on the market is available
from the following web site:
http://www.taltech.com/products/activex_barcodes.html




On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 05:11:03 -0800, PHELM1
wrote:

How do you stop Excel from suppressing the leading zeros in a cell used for a
barcode that is created using a cell that has them?

There is a special shortcut for that in Excel. All you need to do is
prefix each cell with an apostrophe. So, for example, instead of
typing:
000123
....you should type in:
'000123

When creating your barcodes the apostrophe will be ignored, but you
will get the leading zeros.

Alek Szymanski
http://www.barcodewiz.com

PHELM1 wrote:
How do you stop Excel from suppressing the leading zeros in a cell used for a
barcode that is created using a cell that has them?