If you on PeopleTools 8.51.19, 8.52.08, or 8.53 and higher, this option can be added to you app server’s config file to change how the Download to Excel feature handles numeric columns. Without this parameter set, the leading zero’s in a column will disappear because Excel will treat those columns as integers. This parameter changes numeric columns to character fields so the leading zero’s remain. (1228354.1)
https://gist.github.com/psadmin-io/dbcb6f2afc551d2b3e5a