How to pad data with leading zeros in SQL

I needed my value to be 8 characters long; and if it wasn’t that, the first few should be “0” until there were 8 characters.

You can use the REPLICATE() and RIGHT() functions.

Here’s the SQL:

SELECT 
  employeeIdAsText, 
  RIGHT(REPLICATE('0', 8) + employeeIdAsText, 8) AS employeeIdPadded
FROM dbo.Employees

This only works if the field is text (ex VARCHAR) type.

If your text is numeric, you’ll have to CAST it first:

SELECT 
  employeeId, 
  RIGHT(REPLICATE('0', 8) + CAST(employeeId AS VARCHAR(8)), 8) AS employeeIdPadded
FROM dbo.Employees