LEFT

Returns a substring from the left side of a supplied string.

Syntax

LEFT(string, [num_chars])

Arguments

Argument	Description	Required
string	The string from which to extract number of characters.	Required
num_chars	The number of characters to extract from the left side of string. Defaults to 1.	Optional

Examples

Get first character

Get first 5 characters

Extract first name from cell

Related Functions

Other Text functions:

• CLEAN - Removes all nonprintable characters from text
• CONCATENATE - Returns the concatenation of a list of arguments.
• ENDSWITH - Returns TRUE if the text ends with search text, returns FALSE otherwise.
• EXACT - Compares two text strings and returns TRUE if they are exactly the same, FALSE otherwise
• FIND - Returns the position of the first occurrence from within_text.
• FIXED - Formats a number as text with a fixed number of decimals
• LEN - Returns the length of a given string.
• LOWER - Returns a string after converting it to lowercase
• MID - Returns a substring from the middle of a given string.
• PROPER - Capitalizes the first letter in each word of a text value
• REGEXMATCH - Returns true if the text matches the regular expression pattern; otherwise returns false.
• REPLACE - Replaces part of a text string with a different text string
• REPT - Repeats text a given number of times
• RIGHT - Returns a substring from the right side of a given string.
• SEARCH - Returns the start position of the find_text string from the first character of the text string.
• STARTSWITH - Returns TRUE if the text starts with search text, returns FALSE otherwise.
• SUBSTITUTE - Returns the text after replacing one or more text strings with another text string
• TEXTJOIN - Returns the combination of two or more one-dimensional arrays with or without a delimiter.
• TRIM - Removes all spaces from a text string except for single spaces between words.
• UPPER - Returns the string after converting all letters to uppercase
• VALUE - Returns a numeric value for a text that appears in a recognized format (i.e. a number, date, or time format).

---

← Back to Formula Reference