• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Microsoft Excel Tips and Tricks - Computergaga

  • Home
  • Excel Online Courses
  • Excel Functions List
  • Free Downloads
  • Blog
  • Tutorials
  • About

LEFT Function

The LEFT function is used to extract a specific number of characters from the start of a cell.

This can be useful to when needing to remove unwanted characters in a cell that appear on the right of the cells content. This can happen as a result of importing data into Excel from another application or database.

The syntax for the LEFT function is:

=LEFT(text, [num_chars])

ArgumentPurpose
TextThe data containing the characters you want to extract
Num_charsThe number of characters you want to extractIf omitted, it extracts only the first character

The example below shows the LEFT function being used to extract the first 2 characters from the content of cell A1.

Excel LEFT function to extract characters from start of a cell

Primary Sidebar

Popular Posts

  • Excel Fixtures and League Table Generator
  • Excel IF Function Contains Text – A Partial Match in a Cell
  • 5 Reasons Why your Excel Formula is Not Calculating
  • Excel Formula to Display the Sheet Name in a Cell
  • 4 Alternatives to Nested IF Formulas
  • How to Create a Reverse FIND Formula
  • Check if a Value is an Even Number
  • How to Hyperlink to a Hidden Worksheet in Excel
  • IF Function in Power Query Including Nested IFS
  • Conditional Formatting Multiple Columns – 3 Examples

Recent Posts

  • SEQUENCE Function in Excel
  • Sort by Drop Down List in Excel
  • Advanced SUM Function Examples – The Power of SUM
  • Display Negative Time in Excel
  • Lookup Multiple Values in Excel
Advanced Excel Success book

Footer

Contact

[email protected]

Useful Links

  • Home
  • Excel Online Courses
  • Tutorials
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Jobs by Jooble

Course Topics

  • Charts
  • Courses
  • Dashboards
  • Downloads
  • Excel Tips
  • Formulas
  • Mail Merge
  • Office
  • PivotTables
  • Power BI
  • Power Pivot
  • Power Query
  • VBA

Join Our Mailing List

© Copyright 2020 Computergaga · All Rights Reserved ·