From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 07:50:38 -0500, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:   
      
   > On 1/19/26 00:49, Robert Woodward wrote:   
   >>   
   >> In article <10kjkb5$3p7to$15@dont-email.me>,   
   >>   
   >>> Lawrence D’Oliveiro  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>> On Sun, 18 Jan 2026 08:35:24 -0500, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> ... some movie promotion firm had software that treated ZIP codes   
   >>>> as numbers, but then dropped leading '0's from those numbers.   
   >>>   
   >>> Microsoft Excel user!   
   >>   
   >> I ran into a similar problem myself with Excel; I entered those   
   >> numbers as text to fix it.   
   >>   
   > I have to do that with ISBNs in my spreadsheet, which is where Excel   
   > would beat LibreOffice--in Excel a leading single quote doesn't   
   > display but means "what follows is text", while in LibreOffice I   
   > have to constantly be formatting the cells.   
      
   I just fired up LibreOffice Calc, and without changing any settings,   
   entered an example ISBN “978-3-16-148410-0” that I found online; it   
   showed it just the way I typed it. I even tried changing that “9” in   
   front to a leading zero, entered the result into a new cell, and it   
   kept the leading zero, without trying to format the value as a number.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)