Help - AppSheet Database Import Removing Leading Zero's

[lochtefeldm]

I have data in a google sheet that is formatted as plain text but for some reason when I import to Appsheet Database it keeps removing leading zeros.

Ive tried to add row 2 with placeholder text so it doesn't transform the numbers, but it keeps converting the column to a decimal type during import even with that.

Is this a bug? Any ideas how to combat this?

[lynchk21]

Is your [CMS Certification Number] column set to Text in Appsheet, or is the column type set to  Number?

[lochtefeldm]

When importing the column type is set to decimal automatically. When changing to text, it doesn't revert the values to their original state. 

[lynchk21 · Accepted solution]

I just did a trial, and it looks like you could maybe do one of the following:

1. Change the column name from CMS Certification Number to CMS Certification Text
   • This imported correctly for me, since AppSheet doesn't guess it is a number column
2. After import, change the column type to Text, and then copy and paste values only your spreadsheet data in the row 
   • This corrected the values upon refresh
3. Add a letter to the beginning of each value before import, and then remove them afterwards
   • This maintained the Text type format in my test

[lochtefeldm]

Thank you!