Formatting ZIP codes in Google Sheets can be easily accomplished using a custom number format that preserves leading zeroes:
Highlight the cells you want to format. You can click and drag to select multiple cells, or click on a column or row header to select the entire column or row.
Go to the menu bar at the top of the screen. Click on Format to open the format options. In the dropdown menu, hover over "Number" to open the side menu where you will see various formatting options. At the bottom of this side menu, click on “Custom number format”.
In the dialog box that appears, type 00000 into the input field. This format tells Google Sheets that you want every number in the selected cells to be displayed as a five-digit number, adding leading zeros if the original number has fewer than five digits.
After typing 00000 into the input field, click "Apply".
The format will be applied to the selected cells immediately. If you have any numbers in those cells, you'll see them change to reflect the new format, with leading zeros added where necessary.
We hope that this article has helped you and given you a better understanding of how to format ZIP codes easily in Google Sheets. If you enjoyed this article, you might also like our articles on how to compare two columns in Google Sheets and how to find the highest value in Google Sheets.
