Leading zeros in google spreadsheet automatically removed

Question

I have a column in which all inputs are numbers. But these numbers are actually not real numbers. Not real in the sense, 050 in this case is very different from 50

The problem is that whenever I add 050 the sheet automatically turns it to 50. I have also tried ** 050**. That is, prepending a space to no avail. It still auto-corrects as 50.

What can I do to avoid this?

Answer 1

If there's a difference between 50 and 050, what you have are strings (i.e. text).

Changing the cell format to Plain Text via the Format>Numbers>Plain Text will keep leading zeros.