Zero Padding & Text Padder

Lines

Result

About this tool

Pad every line of a list to a fixed length with zeros or any other character. It is the quick way to restore leading zeros that a spreadsheet dropped from ZIP codes, product codes, employee IDs or invoice numbers, and to make IDs sort and compare correctly as text.

Everything runs in your browser. Your data is never sent to a server.

How it works

• Pad on the left adds the padding character in front until the line is the target length (42 becomes 00042); Pad on the right adds it at the end. A line that is already as long as the target, or longer, is left unchanged and never cut.
• Remove leading padding characters does the opposite of left padding: it strips the padding character from the start of each line, keeping at least one character (0007 becomes 7, and 000 becomes 0). The target length is not used.
• Lines made only of digits (0 to 9) are padded and everything else, including empty lines, is passed through untouched. Every line pads all lines, and an empty line becomes a line of padding characters.
• Length is counted in characters (Unicode code points), so an emoji counts as one. Some emoji and accented letters are built from several code points, which can make a line look shorter or longer than its count.
• The padding character can be one character only. If you type more, the first one is used.
• Negative numbers (-5), decimals (3.14) and numbers with a plus sign or thousands separators are not made only of digits, so choose Every line if you want them padded as text.

FAQ