LEFT() – Extracts leftmost characters from text

LEFT(text, numChars)

• text: The text string or a cell reference containing the text from which to extract characters.
• numChars: The number of characters to extract from the left of the text. This must be a non-negative integer.

LEFT(T1A1, 3)

Extracts the first 3 characters from the text in cell T1A1.

• If T1A1 = "Example Text": LEFT(T1A1, 7) → "Example"
• If T1A1 = "MathGrid": LEFT(T1A1, 4) → "Math"
• If T1A1 = "Data" and you request more characters than available: LEFT(T1A1, 10) → "Data" (returns the entire string)
• If T1A1 = "Information" and numChars is 0: LEFT(T1A1, 0) → "" (an empty string)

• Start-of-string extraction: Always extracts characters from the beginning of the input text.
• Handling of numChars: If numChars is 0, it returns an empty string. If numChars is greater than the length of the text, it returns the entire text string.
• Numeric conversion: If the text argument refers to a cell containing a number, that number will first be converted to text, and then LEFT() will operate on that text representation.

• Extracting area codes from phone numbers (if formatted consistently).
• Getting the first initial from a name: LEFT(nameCell, 1).
• Isolating prefixes or identification codes from a longer string.
• Creating abbreviations or shortened versions of text for display.

• numChars is negative: Providing a negative number for numChars will likely result in an error.
• numChars is not a number: The numChars argument must be an integer or a cell reference pointing to one.
• Text argument is a number but expecting string logic: e.g., LEFT(12345, 2) will treat "12345" as text and return "12".
• Assuming right-to-left: LEFT() always starts from the left. For right-to-left extraction, use the RIGHT() function.