My usual process with drawing sets is to print them to a PDF file for each sheet. Those PDFs derive their name from the SSM as the sheet number followed by the sheet title. The sort order in the folder of the PDFs is based on the leading number of the PDF name and sorts fine up to 9 but then goes to 1, 10, 11 .... 2, 20, 21 and so on. If I numbered the sheets 01, 02, 03, my title blocks inherited this as their sheet number from the field that was the default value of the sheet number attribute. I wanted my title blocks to only show 1, 2, 3 ... as their number, and I finally figured it out today. I revised the field, copied its contents and pasted it into a field formula, pressed the 'evaluate' button to enable the Format list, selected Decimal, 0 precision, then Additional Format and chose 'drop leading zeros'.
Anyway, it finally made the results I wanted. Title blocks show 1, 2, 3 and PDFs get written as 01, 02, 03.
I thought I'd share it in hopes it might lead someone else to their own solution for a similar need.