Keeping leading zeros when refreshing pivot table

[DashboardNovice]

I have numbers that down loaded as number format. The single digits (1-9) don't have a leading zero. I enter one by doing something like '07, then save it (in a table).

I refresh the pivot table that references that dynamic range and the leading zero is dropped. I need to keep the leading zero because I need to use it in a VLOOKUP.

I tried custom number formatting and that didn't help. Can anybody offer any suggestions?

 

[GraH - Guido]

Are you sure you need to have the leading "0" for your vlookup?
Since you have not uploaded a sample file, hard to guess how your data looks like. So for reference see attached.