How to make MS Exell display "001" instead of "1" ?

Set the cells as text formats instead of numbers.

Well duh... That was easy enough...

Thanks a million!

Same goes for anything excel is trying to treat as a formula. Or you can just precede it with an apostrephe. That is to display an equal sign, type '=

Or to keep the numbers as numbers, you can select your range of numbers, go to Format>Cells and select Custom. You could then enter 000 in the box then all numbers in that range will have leading zeroes. Formatting them as text won't help if you need to keep the numeric values.

Mike, that's fantastic. I never even noticed the custom box.

I use the Custom box a lot.... my project numbers are 0000.000

also, you can use the Custom box for displaying the date.... I like to see my date mm-dd-yy.... I know there's a 'date' box, but it was easier to just use the Custom box....

yesterday, I wanted to not display a zero, if the answer to the formula is zero.... but only in one section of my spreadsheet..... 'help' sent me to the Custom box.... it's perfect.... just what I wanted!!

I use Excel for sooo many things.... I've been inserting small photos or graphics.... it's great fun....

PaL
:-)

One of these days we need to exchange excel templates.

I've been doing some complicated systems on excel, I'm sure others have as well. We might be able to learn from each other's work.

I'd also love to know others opinions on excel. I have to put together a database to track 4,000 items and I wondered if I could use excel or would I have to go with an Access database or similar. Can excel handle that kind of quantity easily? It would be a lot of information getting entered.

well Heevan that was 5 years ago last I used an excel database - I used MS access for about everything now. I have a contact manager\gl reader I put together that is about 8 megs and has around 6,000 records, other are larger but I use this one daily - I built view and queries that link right into the GL, using ODBC linking.

It's been about 8 years since I had to set up a database in Access - I guess I'll have to brush up.

Thanks to you too, Peace and Love. In the same situation, I've used the =if function with " " to omit the zero. It was tedious.

I suggest Access for anything bigger than maybe 1, 000 - 2,000 rows of data. Excel just gets unwieldy and chances are good that you'd need to do queries anyway, so you may as well set everything up so that you can do 'em.

yes, Access would be best.... Jespah makes a good point.... think about all the scenarios that might come up in the future, where you'll need to look for something in the database....

and remember, copy your database onto a CD occasionally, and take the CD off-site.... I carry mine around in my car.... (I know, I sound like your mother!!)

roger, you can set the whole file to not show the zeros, by going to Tools>Options>View and click on or off "Zero Values"....

another one of my favorites is 'hidden'.... you can put a formula (or a number) in a skinny little 'hidden' cell, and then use that number in another formula..... you just need to remember where you hid the formula (or number).... LOL...

harmonic.... how's your Excel project working?.... it's probably too late, but did you know that you can automatically complete a list of numbers.... in 'help', look for "filling in data based on adjacent cells".... basically, you just highlight a few of the last numbers in your column, hold onto the little square in the lower right corner of the cell (it's called the "fill handle"), and drag it down the column... release, and ~presto~ you have a column of consecutive numbers.... it does it with days, times, quarters, etc, too....

PaL
:-)