What is the use of LEFT Function in Excel?

Data Science, AI and ML
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The Excel LEFT function extracts a given number of characters from the left side of a supplied text string.

  • Purpose: Extract text from the left of a string
  • Return value: One or more characters.

Syntax

=LEFT (text, [num_chars])

Arguments

  • text - The text from which to extract characters.
  • num_chars - [optional] The number of characters to extract, starting on the left side of text. Default = 1.

Example:

To extract the first three characters of “January”:

=LEFT("January",3) // returns "Jan"