From: evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com   
      
   On 1/19/26 16:09, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   > 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.   
      
   The hyphens make it text (because there's no leading "=").   
      
   However, now the leading apostrophe/single quote now seems to work;   
   possibly some update changed it.   
      
   --   
   Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn   
   Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child;   
   nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong.   
   --Robin Givhan   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)