Remove Leading or Trailing Zeros in Excel
This article teaches you how to remove zeros from the beginning (Leading) or end (Trailing) of numbers in Excel.
Steps
Removing Leading Zeros
- Highlight the cells with leading zeros. If you’re working with numbers in a column, you can highlight the whole column by clicking the column letter.
- Right-click the highlighted cells. If your computer doesn’t have a right mouse button, press Ctrl as you click with the left. A menu will appear.
- Click Format Cells. The Format Cells dialog will appear.
- Select Number from the left column.
- Type a “0” (zero) into the “Decimal Places” box.
- Click OK. It’s at the bottom-right corner of the screen. This brings you back to your spreadsheet, where you should no longer see zeros before your numbers.
- If you still see leading zeros, double-click the cells, then press ↵ Enter or ⏎ Return.
Removing Trailing Zeros
- Highlight the cells with trailing zeros. If you’re working with numbers in a column, you can highlight the whole column by clicking the column letter.
- Right-click the highlighted cells. If your computer doesn’t have a right mouse button, press Ctrl as you click with the left. A menu will appear.
- Click Format Cells. The Format Cells dialog will appear.
- Select Custom from the left column.
- Type a code into the box under “Type.” If any text is in the box, delete it now. Then, type 0.### into the box.
- Click OK. You will no longer see extraneous zeros at the ends of your numbers.