How to Remove Leading or Trailing Zeros in Excel

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.