I have a long list of numbers that end in -DOC. I'm trying to delete the -DOC using find and replace but when I do that, It gets rid of the leading zero.

ex. 00344-DOC turns into 344

My column is formatted as text but for some reason find and replace cancels that. The numbers in my list are all different lengths so custom formatting doesn't work.

Why does excel hate zeros so much? I mean if someone didn't want them there are so many formats and tools to get rid of them easily however, the way it is currently set up, it is so hard for people who do want them, to keep them.