I am trying to format three Columns of a sheet with the Custom datatype, one
0000000, another 0000, and the third 00000000. Data from the spreadsheet
will be fed to a barcode label printer that needs to have the leading zeros.

In Excel 2003, surprisingly, I can use the 7 zero custom format and it works
fine, but when you try to format a column of cells to do 0000 or 00000000, it
will show the data correctly, but will not mark the column with that
format...when you go back to those cells, they show "Special" as the format.
I've fiddled and fiddled with no change. This is a real problem because in
exporting from this sheet, the leading zeros are not transmmitted unless the
the correct format is recorded. Any ideas?