Hey nonrev...this is my first time replying to someone to try and help them so i might not be good at it...also, i'm a beginner at access so i would imagine my method is not too practical...but may get the job done....here we go...
I'm not sure what an update query is, but you could run a query to start a new row with all the new numbers....
first i set the value of the old number field ([Number]) to be text and put a mask on it so that it only allows digits 0-9 and only eight of them...in this way any new numbers you put in you wont have to worry about leaving out the zeros....
after that i ran a query to get a new number...the query field entry looked like this:
NewNum: GetZero([Number])
***calling a Public Function written in VBA
the function looked like this:
Public Function GetZero(nmbr As String) As String
Dim seven As String
seven = nmbr
If Len(seven) = 7 Then
seven = "0" + seven
End If
GetZero = seven
End Function
this way the zeros are added to the old numbers...i'm not sure if this helped or not but i tried...also, i was under the assumption that these numbers wouldn't be used with math as in they were ID's of some sort so therefore they could be entered as text...aight lata