How to get phpexcel to keep leading 0s in phone numbers?

Question

Here's the code i'm using right now to set the cell values. It works alright if the number has separators like . or / but when there's no separator it gets saved as int and the leading 0 is stripped

$sheet->setCellValue($letter[$j].$row_nr,$entity['Phone'], PHPExcel_Cell_DataType::TYPE_STRING);

Answer 1

For me this did the trick

// Set the value explicitly as a string
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setCellValueExplicit('A1', '0029', PHPExcel_Cell_DataType::TYPE_STRING);

Answer 2

Either:

// Set the value explicitly as a string
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setCellValueExplicit('A1', '0029', PHPExcel_Cell_DataType::TYPE_STRING);

or

// Set the value as a number formatted with leading zeroes
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('A3', 29);
$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->getStyle('A3')->getNumberFormat()->setFormatCode('0000');

Note that in the first case I'm calling the setCellValueExplicit() method, not the setCellValue() method. In your code, passing PHPExcel_Cell_DataType::TYPE_STRING to setCellValue() has no meaning, and the argument is simply ignored.