Leading 0

Excel will cause problems with FIPS and ZIP codes when they start with a "0".  These are normally stored as strings, but Excel will treat it as a number and remove the leading 0.  This will cause problems with doing a join.

Potential solutions: 

• Edit button on Table view, String field operations, Add leading zeros.  If this does not work because the field is too small, you can copy the field and make it longer, and then add the zeros.
• Search and replace on the rest of the FIPS code, and either add a "0" or remove it.  You must be careful that you do not find matches to the search string in the rest of the FIPS code.

Last revision 10/27/2015