EXCEL FUNCTIONS-LEFT

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

LEFT function comes under the TEXT category in Excel.

LEFT FUNCTION is used if we need to extract a specified number of characters counted from the left side of a string.

LEFT returns the first character or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify.

PURPOSE OF LEFT FUNCTION IN EXCEL

LEFT FUNCTION returns the specified number of characters from a string, counted from the left.

This function is of extreme importance when it comes for day to day Excel jobs.

This function is applicable when we have this kind of situation.

  • Get a certain number of characters from a word.
  • Remove first word from the line in a cell.
  • Remove a portion of the sentence from the starting side.

PREREQUISITES TO LEARN LEFT

THERE ARE A FEW PREREQUISITES THAT WILL ENABLE YOU TO UNDERSTAND THIS FUNCTION IN A BETTER WAY.

  •  Basic understanding of how to use a formula or function.
  •  Basic understanding of rows and columns in Excel.
  • Some information about the financial terms is an advantage for the use of such formulas.
  •  Of course, Excel software.

Helpful links for the prerequisites mentioned above

What Excel does? How to use formula in Excel?

SYNTAX: LEFT FUNCTION

The syntax is the way you need to write the function to use it in Excel.

The Syntax for the function is

=LEFT(STRING, NUMBER OF CHARACTERS)

STRING Text from which the characters are to be extracted

NUMBER OF CHARACTERS number of characters to be extracted.

Rest will be removed.

EXAMPLE:LEFT FUNCTION IN EXCEL

DATA SAMPLE

Let us try to exact the first 5 letters from a string.

Sample String: It is a beautiful day.

EXCEL: LEFT FUNCTION EXAMPLE

STEPS TO USE LEFT FUNCTION

The strings are put in the cells G9 and G11.

The string used is “IT IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY”.

The output is sought in cells I9 AND I11. The functions used are

=LEFT(G9,5) FOR I9

This function extracts 5 letters from the text stored in G9.

Similarly, for I11, the function is

=LEFT(G11,7).

This function extracts 7 letters from text stored in G11.

The text can be declared in the function also with the use of “”.

e.g. =LEFT(“HELLO”,2)

The result will be HE.

KNOWLEDGE BYTES

USES OF LEFT FUNCTION

LEFT FUNCTION can be used for many situations such as separating the DATE.

Suppose we need to separate the day of a date.

Always remember that the day portion should be uniformly present for all the dates. i.e. if it’s dd, then it should be dd for all the dates.

Suppose the dates are

01.02.2020

02.02.2020

10.02.2020

and we need to extract the DAY portion from these days.

We can use =LEFT(DATE_TEXT,2)

and copy the function to all the further cells.

The result will be achieved. 

EXCEL: LEFT FUNCTION ANIMATED EXAMPLE