A couple of ideas...
1. If what you really want to do is pad out the number with leading zeroes,
so that the value "1" becomes "001," 7 becomes "007," and 14 becomes "014,"
this is very easy. Format the range (group of cells, or maybe the whole
column) by going to Format > Cells > Number > Custom, and define a custom
format that is 000. That is, in the little window in the dialog that has
the word "Type:" above it, enter the value 000.
Apply this to your range and you'll have a bunch of numbers padded with as
many leading zeroes as it takes to make them 3 digits.
2. If you literally meant to prefix two zeroes before the numbers,
regardless of how many digits they had, and the number they have varies, the
best way I know to do that is to apply the following formula in cell B1
(assuming the first value is in cell A1):
="00"&TEXT(A1,"##0")
....then copy the formula down in column B, beside each value in column A.
That formula takes the numeric value in A1, converts it to a text string
with no decimal or digits after the decimal. Now that it's a text string,
it adds the text string "00" (two zeroes) in front of it. The adding
operator is the ampersand, or "&". It's really called "concatenating" the
two strings, or groups of character, together into one string.
I think any approach that doesn't turn it into a string is probably going to
fail, as I don't know a format approach (like in option 1) that will place 2
zeroes regardless of the number of digits.
HTH,
--Pete
