Oracle BI Publisher - How to format numbers as text so that leading zeroes don't dissappear

Question

When creating an Oracle BI Publisher rdf template in Microsoft Word, with intended output to Microsoft Excel; is there a way to format numbers as text so that leading zeroes don't dissappear? I would like to print out telephone numbers and they have values such as 0215551234; where I want the leading zero to show. In BI Publisher this shows as 215551234.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you still need this, but here is an example of a solution I found on the Internet (and it's on SQL level so you don't need to worry about complicated XML codes):

SELECT '="' || q.item_code || '"' excel_display_item_code
FROM   (SELECT '00005689' item_code FROM DUAL
        UNION
        SELECT '00000012' item_code FROM DUAL
        UNION
        SELECT '01345677' item_code FROM DUAL) q;

Answer 2

In BI Publisher properties for the field check Force LTR option

or you can put the following in form field help text

<fo:bidi-override direction="ltr" unicode-bidi="bidi-override"><?YOUR_TEL_FIELD?></fo:bidi-override>