Here is a question often asked by club membership committees trying to keep track of membership numbers:


I have a column of Membership Numbers (6 and 7 digits long) that were
sent to me in Excel which must all be 8 digits long for uploading to
a Membership program on a website.

Could someone please tell me if there is a formula that can be
applied to the column telling it to add one "0" in front of the 7
digit numbers and two "00" in front of the 6 digit numbers?

I have tried changing the Format/Number selection but nothing seems
to work.


Here's my answer:

To display leading zeros, create a custom number format that uses the 0 character. For example, if you want all the numbers to be displayed with 8 digits, use the following number format string; values with fewer than ten digits are displayed with leading zeros: 00000000

Follow these steps:

1. Highlight your column
2. Right click within the column
3. Select Format Cell
4. Click on the Number Tab
5. Select Custom
6. Under Type: enter 00000000 (or whatever the number of digits you need in your string)
7. Hit Ok

Now all the membership numbers that are less than 8 digits will display with additional zeros in front of them.