Formatting in Excel to Access Database

I am copy cells from excel and putting it into an Access database, but the cells need to have at least 6 characters, if not then I need to add 0's infront of the existing number. When I do this in excel, and then copy it into Access, it does not carry over the format??? It deletes the 0's, any ideas how I can do this?

Change the numbers to strings before trying to copy them over.

In hopes that I do not sound like an idiot, how do I do that?

With 45 in A1
=REPT(0,8-LEN(A1))&A1
should do the trick for 8 digit long strings.

Thanks I appreciate this, this will work for my initial problem, but I have added another thread to see if I can make a macro out of this, trying to kill 2 birds with a stone...