[mrgoldenbrown]

Zipcodes aren't really numbers, they are strings. You can't meaningfully do math on zipcodes, so better to just treat them as text.

[recursive]

Yes, that's the point. But excel just incorrectly determines what you meant, and corrupts your data.

[ziddoap]

>But excel just incorrectly determines what you meant

How would you, if you were programming excel, determine whether the 5-digit number entered with a leading 0 is meant to be a zip code or not?

[recursive]

I would not make any default determination until and unless there was a proactive user action. If there is any value that doesn't round trip through string serialization, don't allow it to be coerced without the user deciding to allow it, explicitly.

[dreghgh]

You know that many users of Excel enter numbers into the cells and then do arithmetic calculations with them right?

[recursive]

No, but I think it's a lot. I'd bet that the vast majority of those round-trip through string serialization, requiring no further user action based on my recommendation.

[dreghgh]

Disagree, the most common way for an experienced user to type a date into Excel is as a partial date if it is this year, eg 4-Apr, which is instantly converted to 04/04/2025 or whatever.

The vast majority of dates I personally type into Excel would be in this form.

[sosborn]

Would keeping the leading zero cause any problems with future calculations?

[niij]

That's why Excel is cursed. It tries to interpret so many "just strings" as something else.