When importing our exports into Excel, by default Excel will try to determine the type of each column, and will assume that the ZIP codes are Numbers. This will cause Excel to remove any leading leading 0's.
In order to prevent this, we recommend that you set the Column type to 'Text' when importing our CSV's to Excel.
Note that many spredsheet applications will automatically bring you to the importer workflow when you attempt to open a CSV file, however not all will. If you are not prompted with an Importer when opening a CSV in your spredsheet application, you may have to specifically 'import' the file. These options will typically be under 'File' > 'Import'. For example, in Excel you can find this option here:
When you attempt to open one of our CSV downloads, you should be prompted to import the file into your default spredsheet application. This will typically be Excel, however these instructions should work in free alternatives as well.
You will want to select that you have a CSV file. You can continue to click through the import until you are prompted with questions about the data.
This is the important part, where you need to format the ZIP Code columns as 'Text'.
Find and select the ZIP Code columns, and then select the 'Text' data format. Note that some of our exports may have multiple ZIP Code columns, and you will have to select the format for both of them.
You should now be good to continue. Clicking 'Finish' will import the data with the proper formatting in place, and you should have all of your leading zeros on your ZIP Codes.