Avoid Microsoft Excel deletes leading 0 in CSV files

When  you open CSV document using Microsoft Excel,  if you have a column with numeric data and leading 0, Excel will automatically delete the 0 and convert it the field type to number. To avoid Excel doing this automatically,  there are several ways. For me,  the easiest way is by importing the CSV file instead of opening it straight in Excel.

To do that, follow the steps below

1. Open a blank Microsoft Excel document.
2. Navigate to data tab on your toolbar.
3. Click import data from text.
   
4. Find your csv file and click import.
5. Leave the default choices - file type as delimited, start import at row 1, and file origin: MS-DOS and press Next.
   
6. On the next screen, tick comma under delimiter options. You can untick or leave tab as it is. Press next.
7. On the last screen, change the column with leading zero numeric data format as text. To do this, simply click on the column and change the column data format as Text.
   
8. Click finish.It will ask where do you want to put the data, press Ok.