Customer is almost always right, but this may be a case where they are not.If the data is numeric and if it is currently stored in a column that is of numeric data type, keep it that way.When you want to select, simply cast it to varchar(5) like shown below and return the results:SELECT RIGHT('00000'+CAST(YourColumn AS VARCHAR(5)),5) FROM YourTable
Another possibility is to create a computed column. ALTER TABLE YourTable ADD CharCol AS RIGHT('00000'+CAST(YourColumn AS VARCHAR(5)),5);
Then select Charcoal instead of Yourcolumn.Edit: If you have already changed it to varchar(5) and just want to pad with zeros, do thisUPDATE YourTable SET YourColumn = RIGHT('00000'+CAST(YourColumn AS VARCHAR(5)),5);