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Use case: Excel export without losing leading zeros

When you export a sheet to CSV and run it through a generic converter, ZIP codes, employee IDs, and SKUs often become numbers. This page describes a concrete workflow that keeps them as text.

Who this helps

Analysts, support ops, and developers who receive spreadsheet CSV exports and need a JSON array for an API, script, or config — without silently changing 00142 into 142.

The problem

Spreadsheets store display formatting separately from values. After CSV export, many online converters infer types. Leading zeros disappear; empty cells may become null; the string false may become a boolean. Downstream systems then fail lookups or reject payloads.

The workflow

  1. In Excel (or Sheets), export CSV UTF-8 with a clear header row.
  2. Open this site’s converter and paste or choose the file.
  3. Preview a few rows to confirm columns still line up.
  4. Convert. Confirm IDs still show as quoted strings in the JSON (for example "zip": "02139").
  5. Copy or download, then feed the next tool. Transform types only where you intentionally need numbers.
Product promise (honest): local processing; every cell as a string; empty → ""; limits 1 MiB / 10k rows. Related phrases people search around this task include online CSV to JSON conversion and preserving zeros from spreadsheet exports — we do not invent search volumes here.

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