Export to Excel and Keep Preceding "0" for numbers?

If you look at the export CSV file with a text editor does it have the preceding 0’s? If so, try formatting the column in excel as text instead of number and see if that works.

Hi Michael, same problem, preceding zeros are dropped in the Excel CSV export but data is OK in ConTEXT.

I just read up: “By default, Excel’s ‘general’ cell format eliminates leading zeroes.”

The cells in the CSV exports are all in ‘general’ format. Maybe they should be in ‘text’ format, which leaves data as-is?

Thanks, otherwise a very useful plugin.

A CSV file does not specify format, only data. When you open it, Excel is then applying its default formats. There is nothing I can do in a CSV file to tell Excel how to format the data. I don’t know if there is any setting you can tweak in Excel to change what it does by default.

Thanks for following up, I understand Excel is the least of your concerns.

I found a basic manual fix for data in Excel:

Convert the cell format (for the column with numbers) from ‘General’ to ‘Custom’.

In the input under ‘Type:’, put in 0000000000 (or the amount of zeroes for the telephone number). This will force numbers to have the same amount of digits – adding a preceding 0 to those without.

For example:
– General Cell: 123
– Change to custom Cell and make Type: 0000
– Data becomes 0123

Basic fix, but hopefully helps someone.