Thanks for the quick reply- yes it is Excel; I'll try what you suggested....

As my username implies, I am a wannabe tech assistant to my wife- she works from home with insurance issues while I offer a modest level of computer advice. Here;s the issue:
laying out a simple spreadsheet to record insurance claim data. claims are assigned sequential numbers all of which begin with 0 (zero) followed by 8-10 other digits. When we enter the complete number into a cell, the leading zero is always dropped when we move to another...