Situation: I have an application that looks at an excel spreadsheet as a
database and pulls account number and account name from the worksheet.

The account numbers range from 5 digits to 10 digits so I need to display
all of the numbers as 10 digits. So I have formatted the cells to display
ten digits (0000000000).

Problem: When my application pulls the numbers, it does not show the
preceding zeros like I need it to.
When I look at the worksheet, the zeroes are displayed, but when I highlight
a cell, the displayed value in the upper left corner box (don't know the
proper name for it) does not show the zeroes.

Any ideas how to get these zeroes to be permanent?

Thanks for you time and attention.

Any suggests