Why is the leading zero dropped when I write a string of numbers to Excel?

I am trying to write a date string to an Excel file. I use the following command to create a date string:

a = {datestr(date, 'yymmdd')} % date in format yymmdd

This returns a 1x1 cell containing the string '051019', for example, which has a leading zero.

If I write this to an Excel file with the following command:

xlswrite('a.xls', a)

cell A1 of the spreadsheet contains the following:

 51019

The leading zero has been dropped.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This behavior is caused by the way in which Excel discards leading zeros in numbers. To work around this issue, place a single quote before the string, which specifies to Excel that the following value should be entered as text. For example:

a = {['''',datestr(date, 'yymmdd')]};  % concatenate a single quotation to date string

xlswrite('a.xls',a);

This approach does not preclude Excel's ability to perform mathematical operations on the inserted data.