Why Phone Numbers Look Wrong in Excel
Exporting to CSV
When you export or save data as a CSV file, Excel sometimes changes phone numbers.
Instead of keeping the full number, it interprets them as numbers (mathematical values) rather than as text.
This can cause leading zeros to disappear or long numbers to be shortened.
For example, phone number 353870000000 can be exported as 3.5387E+11
How to Fix It
To make sure Excel treats phone numbers as text, you can try one of these methods:
Add an apostrophe at the start
Example:'353870000000
(The apostrophe won’t show in the cell, but it forces Excel to store it as text.)Insert a space in the number
Example:087 0000000
(The space prevents Excel from reformatting it.)
There are other methods too, such as pre-formatting the column as Text before importing your CSV, but the above are quick fixes if you already have numbers in Excel.