GAH - work this time - GridView >>Excel truncating 0s

I dont mean to clog the forum - errors - hopefully this works

I have searched the Internet high and low, but with no luck.  Many people have posts about this but no real solution exists that I could find.  I am exporting a GridView to Excel but I am having my leading 0s truncated.  I am aware that you need to convert the column to a 'text' field but how do I go about doing that. 

I keep my code on the backend and reference it frontend for portability.
NOTE:  GridView ID:  GridView1
DataSource = SqlDataSource1

[backend code - exportToExcel.cs]

using System;

using System.Configuration;

using System.Data;

using System.IO;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Security;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

 

///

/// Summary description for exportToExcel

///

public class exportToExcel

{

    public static void export(GridView gridView)

    {

        HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();

        HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition",

            "attachment; filename=dummy.xls");

        HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";

 

        StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();

       

        HtmlTextWriter htmlTW = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);

 

        //create table to hold gridView

        Table tbl = new Table();

 

        //header

        if (gridView.HeaderRow != null)

        {

            exportToExcel.currentRowStatus(gridView.HeaderRow);

            tbl.Rows.Add(gridView.HeaderRow);

        }

 

        //write rows

        foreach (GridViewRow rowX in gridView.Rows)

        {

            exportToExcel.currentRowStatus(rowX);

            tbl.Rows.Add(rowX);  

        }      

       

        tbl.RenderControl(htmlTW);

 

        //the CSS that should fix the truncation thanks to Excel   >:|   geh

        ////string style = @"