Any numbers with leading zeroes, i.e. 0000123, excel will interpret as the integer 123 even if you change the column format to "text". It's infuriating. The on

Any numbers with leading zeroes, i.e. 0000123, excel will interpret as the integer 123 even if you change the column format to "text". It's infuriating. The only way I found to get around this was to open a new workbook, change the column type to "text" and then paste the data in. I believe this was excel 2010 on windows.