Problems formating numbers with hyphens and leading zeroes.

[jovogler]

Hi,

I'm trying to format a list of phone numbers that are using this number format:
###-### ## ##

it starts with a zero and it keeps disappearing and when I enter two zeroes to make it appear there is a space that comes out of nowhere making the format look like this:
# ##-### ## ##

I don't understand how this space appears because it is not in the format. Because there are a lot of numbers it will save me a lot of time to simply change the format instead of going through every number and changing them.

Any advice or ideas how I can get rid of that annoying space?

I'm grateful for any help anyone can offer.

 

[RoryA]

Welcome to the forum.

If you want leading 0s to display, you should use this number format:

000-000 00 00

 

[jovogler]

Thanks, I've tried that already but with that format the leading zero does not show, and like I said adding more so it does show up creates this weird space.

 

[RoryA]

If the leading zero isn't showing with that format, your cells must contain text, not numbers.

 

[jovogler]

Ok, that's odd it only contains numbers. Using that format the number is supposed to look like this 010-111 11 11 but when I use it, it looks like this 10-1 111 111. No leading zero and the rest of the format looks completely different.

 

[RoryA]

What are your regional settings set to? Specifically, what do you use as the thousands grouping symbol?

 

[jovogler]

Swedish regional settings. The grouping symbol is blank or a space, we don't use any symbols here when writing numbers except to differentiate decimals.

 

[RoryA]

That would explain it then. Excel is treating the space in the number format as a thousands grouping symbol. Try using this instead:

000-000\ 00\ 00

 

[jovogler]

So that's the reason huh? It worked brilliantly! Thank you so much for the help this will make my day at the office tomorrow a lot less bothersome. :D