This technique works in both scenarios (where the numbers have been converted into text by using an apostrophe or a custom number formatting has been applied to the cells). It would not work if an apostrophe has been used to convert numbers to text (in which case you should use the previous method) Multiply by 1 (using Paste Special technique) Note that this technique would only work when the reason for the leading zeroes was custom number formatting. The above steps would change the custom number formatting of the cells and now the numbers would be displayed as expected (where there would be no leading zeros). In the Numbers group, click on the Number Format dropdown.Select the cells that have the numbers with the leading zeros.Change the Custom Number Formatting of the CellsĪnother really common reason that may make your numbers show up with leading zeros is when your cells have been formatted to always show a specific number of digits in each number.Ī lot of people want to make the numbers look consistent and of the same length, so they specify the minimum length of the numbers by changing the formatting of the cells.įor example, if you want all the numbers to show up as 5 digits numbers, if you have a number which is only three-digit Excel would automatically add two leading zeros to it.īelow I have a dataset where custom number formatting has been applied to always show a minimum of five digits in the cell.Īnd the way to get rid of these leading zeros is just to remove the existing formatting from the cells. To handle those cases, use the methods covered next. Note: This method would not work if the leading zeros have been added as a part of the custom number formatting of the cells. That’s it! The above steps would remove the apostrophe and convert these text values back into numbers.Īnd since Excel is programmed to remove leading spaces from any numbers by default, you’ll see that doing this automatically removes all the leading zeros. Click on the yellow error checking icon.You will notice that there is a yellow icon at the top right part of the selection. Select the numbers from which you want to remove the leading zeros.This is also the reason you see these numbers aligned to the left (whereas by default numbers align to the right) and also have the leading 0’s.īelow are the steps to remove these leading zeros from these numbers: Here I have a data set where I have the numbers that have an apostrophe before these as well as the leading zeros. This is probably the easiest method to get rid of leading zeros. If the cause of leading numbers is that someone has added apostrophe before these numbers (to convert these into text), you can use the error checking method to convert these back into numbers with a single click. Convert the Text to Numbers Using the Error Checking Option In this section, I will show you five such methods. There are multiple ways you can use to remove the leading zeros from numbers. So, the first step is to identify the cause so that we can choose the right method to remove these leading zeros.
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Also read: How to Add Leading Zeroes in Excel The method we choose to remove the leading zeros would depend on what is causing it. For example, you can format a cell to always show 5 digits (and if the number is less then five digits, leading zeros are added automatically) And in case the number is smaller, leading zeros are added to make up for it. The cell may have been formatted in such a way that it always shows a certain length of a number.If the number has been formatted as text (mostly by adding an apostrophe before the number), it would retain the leading zeros.Here are some possible reasons that may cause your numbers to retain the leading zeros: In most cases, this makes sense as these leading zeros are not really meaningful.
For example, if you enter 00100 in a cell in Excel, it would automatically convert it into 100. Possible Reasons You May Have Leading Zeros in ExcelĪs I mentioned, Excel automatically removes any leading zeros from numbers.
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