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Avoid Losing Leading Zeros In Excel
Avoid Losing Leading Zeros In Excel

Excel will drop leading zeros when opening certain file types. Here's how to avoid that.

Liam Cadle avatar
Written by Liam Cadle
Updated over 6 years ago

If you have data in EvolutionX that has leading zeros (generally SKU's, Manufacturer Refs and GTIN's) then you've probably noticed that any export from EvolutionX loses these when you open the file in Excel. This is a well known issue for Excel (and other spreadsheet applications) as they see numbers as they're meant to be so drop any leading zeros.

There is a way round this though, so carry on reading to find out how!

Depending on the version of Excel you're using and the operating system, the screenshots may look slightly different, but the process remains the same.

Newer versions of Excel (PC & Mac)

1. Go to the Data-tab and select From Text/CSV.

2. Select the file you want to import from your files (downloads folder by default unless specified otherwise) and press Get Data.

3. Make sure that File Origin is set to Unicode (UTF-8) and Delimited is selected.

4. Make sure that Delimiter is set to Comma.

5. Now you can check if any columns may contain leading zeros by scrolling across and viewing the data preview. If you find any, or know the columns containing leading zeros, click the given column and set Column data format to Text, otherwise any 0's in front of the number might be deleted

6. Once you've completed this click Finish and then OK on the pop up window.

Older Versions of Excel (PC & Mac)

1. Go to the Data tab and click on From Text and find the .csv file to open

2. Find the CSV-file you downloaded from EvolutionX (downloads folder by default unless specified otherwise) and click Get Data.This opens the Text Import Wizard.

3. Make sure that File Origin is set to Unicode (UTF-8). And that the option Delimited is checked off. If this is not the case, find, Unicode (UTF-8) from the drop-down menu and check Delimited.

4. "CSV" stands for "Comma-Separated-Values", meaning that columns are separated with commas in the file. For Excel to read this and convert them into actual columns, make sure that Comma is checked like below.

5. Now you can check if any columns may contain leading zeros by scrolling across and viewing the data preview. If you find any or, know the columns containing leading zeros, click the given column and set Column data format to Text, otherwise any 0's in front of the number might be deleted

6.Click Finish and OK on the pop up to finalise the import.

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