How it works.
LEFT extracts a substring from the left side of a text string based on a specified number of characters. If num_chars is omitted, it defaults to 1.
💡 In simple terms.
Extracts a specific number of characters starting from the very beginning (left edge) of a text cell.
Analogy
"Think of this like cutting off the first few letters of a word starting from the left side."
Syntax guide.
=LEFT(text, [num_chars])
Parameters
textRequired
The text string that contains the characters you want to extract.
num_charsOptional
Specifies the number of characters you want LEFT to extract. Must be greater than or equal to zero.
Default: 1Interactive formula builder.
Fill in the input arguments below to construct your custom formula string. Copy it directly to paste into your Excel spreadsheets.
Generated Output
Best Practices
- Combine LEFT with FIND to extract all characters before a specific character (like a space or hyphen).
- If num_chars is greater than the length of text, LEFT returns all of text.
Common Gotchas
- If num_chars is negative, LEFT returns a #VALUE! error.