mark@bdblues.altair.fr (Mark James) (01/03/90)
I've got a Microsoft Works database from which I'm trying to print mailing labels, sorted by zip code. My problem is that Works *insists* on treating zip codes like normal numbers (because they contain only digits), which means that leading zeroes are suppressed. Consequently everyone in Massachusetts, New Jersey etc. wind up with four-digit zip codes. I can force Works to treat a zip code as a string rather than as a number, in which case the leading zeroes appear, and it still sorts OK; but this involves typing a " character in front of *every* zip code. Needless to say, this is an invitation to horror, when you find that a certain fraction of your labels have sorted as numbers instead of strings because the typist forgot a bunch of " characters. Is there any way to force *all* instances of a zip code field to be taken, generically, as strings? Alternatively, is there a way to force Works to print leading zeroes? Surely I'm not the first sucker to have purchased Works for the production of mailing labels ... am I? ### T. Mark James #### opinions, errors etc are my own ### ### mark@bdblues.altair.fr #### "Hardware is that part of a computer ### +33 (1) 39 63 53 93 #### system that you can kick." ################################ -- Grace Hopper