CSV Exporting: Preserving leading zeros

Question

I\'m working on a .NET application which exports CSV files to open in Excel and I\'m having a problem with preserving leading zeros when the file is opened in Excel. I\'ve

Answer 1

I found a nice way around this, if you add a space anywhere along the phone number, the cell is then not treated as number and is treated as a text cell in both Excel and Apple's iWork Numbers.

It's the only solution I've found so far that plays nice with Numbers.

Yes I realise the number then has a space, but this is easy to process out of large chunks of data, you just have to select a column and remove all spaces.

Also, if this is web related, most web type things are ok with users entering a space in the number field. E.g you can tap-to-call on mobiles.

The challenge is to get the space in there in the first place.

In use:

01202123456 = 1202123456

but

01202 123456 = 01202 123456