[AccessD] oops - forgot to change the subject: should be Access Exporting to Excel

Hello,
I have a very basic question that I'm even embarrassed to ask!

I have a text field that consists of numeric characters. Loan Number. I need
it to be a text field because I have leading zeros on the loan numbers.
I am exporting a report to Excel with this information. I need to do it in a
report because I want to keep the grouping levels intact when the data is
exported to Excel.

Excel interprets my loan number field as numeric - dropping leading zeros. I
have played with different things like exporting as a .txt file (doesn't
work), concatenating a space to the loan number (doesn't work) and
concatenating  a "_" at the end of the field. This last option works because
Excel obviously sees the field as text. I really cannot keep this as a
viable option.

Is my only option to use automation and open Excel after I've done the
export and format the loan number field? If so, how do I find the range and
how does that work with groupings?

This seems like such a simple thing and I can't believe I've never had to
solve this particular issue before!

Thanks so much in advance for help!

Jeanine