How To Use Excel Left Function

This function helps us to extract the substring from a string which starts from the very leftmost character.

How to use excel left function. The text string that contains the characters you want to extract. Left function in excel can either be used as a worksheet function ws or a vba function vba in microsoft excel. This is a built in function in excel which has been categorized as a string text function. Left and find functions are top popular functions which is located in to the text category in excel. You can easily split a text string with the help of left function and find function in excel.

Taking the 4 characters on the right of the source string gives us the year and if we use the mid function starting with the fifth character of the source string and extracting the next 6 characters we are able to parse out the month and day. The left function is a built in function in excel that is categorized as a string text function. As a worksheet function the left function can be entered as part of a formula in a cell of a worksheet. Left will extract digits from numbers as well. The microsoft excel left function allows you to extract a substring from a string starting from the left most character.

After putting cursor itself it defines as it returns the specified number of characters from the start of a text string. The microsoft excel left function is a function that allows you to extract a substring from a string and starts from the leftmost character. Specifies the number of characters you want left to extract. We can copy the formula down to the range b3 b11 to achieve the desired result for the whole data set. We can use the left function to extract the first three characters of the source string which in this case happens to be the day of the week.

Left text num chars leftb text num bytes the function syntax has the following arguments. As we can see in the above screenshot that the left function is where located. If you liked our blogs share it with your friends on facebook. Num chars must be greater than or equal to zero. Left function with find function allows you to quickly extract number of characters in the given text string.

The left function will extract the first 3 digits but will be displayed as text left aligned the value function will convert the output into numbers right aligned. The currency symbol is not part of a number so is not counted or extracted. It can be used as a worksheet function ws and a vba function vba in excel. The tutorial shows how to use the left function in excel to get a substring from the beginning of the text string extract text before a certain character force a left formula to return a number and more. Left function in excel.