I don't use Excel but have seen this mentioned a few times here at Lottery Post. The fact that Excel won't display leading zeros. So a pick 3 number such as 012 will only show up as 12.
This is an excerpt from the MS article about it. Hope this helps the Excel users that didn't know how to fix it.
Typing a Value with Leading Zeros
Because leading zeros are insignificant digits, Microsoft Excel omits them when you type a number, such as 00023, in a cell. In this case, Microsoft Excel applies the General number format.
To type a value with a leading zero, you can use one of the methods described in the previous section to type the value as text, or you can use the following steps to create a custom number format that contains leading zeros.
1. | Select the cell range that you want to format. |
2. | On the Format menu, click Cells. On the Number tab, click Custom. |
3. | In the Type box, type a zero for each digit in the number. For example, if the number has five digits, type five zeros. |
4. | Click OK. |
If you import a text file or parse text, you can use this procedure after you import or parse the text. You do not need to preformat the entries as text. However, you must preformat numbers that are evaluated as dates, times, or scientific notation.
Here is a link to the article