I am using Excel 2003. I guess that is important to have told you.

The next thing I tried was opening the original spreadsheet and globally changing 0: to 0, 1: to 1, 2: to 2, etc, and that worked - I never was returned any null data because I have consistent format in every cell. However, I do not like that "solution" because it is requiring the user to manipulate the file before she runs it through my program. And it's a SSN. What if she makes a typo and changes 1: to 2?

Thank you for the wish of good luck and thanks for trying to help.