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Downloading an Excel File from Interactive Report in APEX 20.1 with leading zeroes

Roxy rollersJun 1 2021

I have stumbled upon an issue which was working just fine in the past. I have an Interactive Report where I have the option of downloading it as a CSV. I do have an STUDENT_ID field where it varchar2(4) in the database and I have my ID's saved as "0001", "0002", "1067" etc. As we all know, to preserve the leading zeroes when downloading as a CSV has it's challenges. So, in the past, I was having to do this:

select '="' || student_id || '"' from student_tb

This worked out well with APEX 5.1 and in the CSV, I would see it as 0001, 0002, 1067. However, now with APEX 20.1, I am noticing that an annoying tab space is being injected in the beginning. When I open the CSV in notepad, I noticed that it was in the following fashion:
Exhibit #1

"	=""0002"""

and in the past with APEX 5.1, It was as follows:
Exhibit #2

"=""0002"""

If I go and remove the tab space from Exhibit #1 and then open it in CSV, the problem gets rectified. Any idea if there is another way in SQL to format this so I preserve the leading zeroes and have it open correctly in Excel?
Thanks in advance

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Added on Jun 1 2021
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