Why did our five-digit item codes lose their first zeros in Excel?
TechnologyThe supplier asked whether “314” meant item “00314.” I checked the spreadsheet I had sent. Twelve codes had lost their first zeros after I opened the CSV in Excel.
These are five-character catalogue IDs, not quantities. I thought changing the column to Text afterwards would bring the zeros back, but the cells still show the shortened values. I have the supplier's original file and have paused the label order.
How would you repair the list without guessing which codes need padding? There are only sixty items, but I would rather do one careful import than manually make sixty cells look right and miss a changed identifier.