My solution won't work for the types of entries you are talking about. Excel treats 0041 and 000041 as the same when ranking or sorting as numbers. I wasn't aware of this 'twist' when suggesting this solution. Sorry

This will probably require some VBA code to accomplish. Maybe someone else has another idea to help you with this.

NOTE: I believe CUSTOM 00000 is the same as SPECIAL: ZIP CODE as both will force display of leading zeros in a 5 digit number.

PS: how confusing is it to have 041 and 0041 be different items?

Good Luck