How To Use Excel Left Function

The microsoft excel left function allows you to extract a substring from a string starting from the left most character.

How to use excel left function. Use the left function when you want to extract characters starting at the left side of text. In terms of worksheet function the left function in excel can be entered as a formula in a cell of the excel worksheet. The microsoft excel left function is a function that allows you to extract a substring from a string and starts from the leftmost character. The left function is a built in function in excel that is categorized as a string text function. Num charsis optional and defaults to 1.

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. 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. If you liked our blogs share it with your friends on facebook. Left text num chars leftb text num bytes the function syntax has the following arguments. 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.

After putting cursor itself it defines as it returns the specified number of characters from the start of a text string. You can easily split a text string with the help of left function and find function in excel. Public function left text as string optional num of chars as long 1 as string left mid text 1 num of chars end function public function right text as string optional num of chars as long 1 as string right mid text len text num of chars num of chars end function public function mid text as string start num as long num of chars as long as string actual implementation end function. Left function in excel. As we can see in the above screenshot that the left function is where located.

Left and find functions are top popular functions which is located in to the text category in excel. Left function with find function allows you to quickly extract number of characters in the given text string. Left will extract digits from numbers as well. This function helps us to extract the substring from a string which starts from the very leftmost character. 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. Specifies the number of characters you want left to extract. Num chars must be greater than or equal to zero. Left function in excel can either be used as a worksheet function ws or a vba function vba in microsoft excel. 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.