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. 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. 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 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. Specifies the number of characters you want left to extract. As a worksheet function the left function can be entered as part of a formula in a cell of a worksheet.

Left text num chars leftb text num bytes the function syntax has the following arguments. Left and find functions are top popular functions which is located in to the text category in excel. The text string that contains the characters you want to extract. This function helps us to extract the substring from a string which starts from the very leftmost character. The microsoft excel left function is a function that allows you to extract a substring from a string and starts from the leftmost character.

We can copy the formula down to the range b3 b11 to achieve the desired result for the whole data set. Left function in excel. As we can see in the above screenshot that the left function is where located. It can be used as a worksheet function ws and a vba function vba in excel. The currency symbol is not part of a number so is not counted or extracted.

In terms of worksheet function the left function in excel can be entered as a formula in a cell of the excel worksheet. 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. 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. Num chars must be greater than or equal to zero. After putting cursor itself it defines as it returns the specified number of characters from the start of a text string.

Left function in excel can either be used as a worksheet function ws or a vba function vba in microsoft excel. Among many different functions that microsoft excel provides for manipulating text data left is one of the most widely used. If you liked our blogs share it with your friends on facebook. This is a built in function in excel which has been categorized as a string text function. Use the left function when you want to extract characters starting at the left side of text.