LEFT

Returns the first (or leftmost) character or characters in a text string.

Syntax

LEFT(text,num_chars)

Text   is the text string that contains the characters you want to extract.

Num_chars   specifies how many characters you want LEFT to extract.

• Num_chars must be greater than or equal to zero.
• If num_chars is greater than the length of text, LEFT returns all of text.
• If num_chars is omitted, it is assumed to be 1.

Examples

LEFT("Sale Price", 4) equals "Sale"

If A1 contains "Sweden", then:

LEFT(A1) equals "S"

Some accounting programs display negative values with the negation sign (–) to the right of the value. If you import a file created in a program that stores negative values in this way, Microsoft Excel may import the values as text. To convert the text strings to values, you must return all of the characters of the text string except the rightmost character (the negation sign), and then multiply the result by –1. For the num_chars argument, use the LEN worksheet function to count the number of characters in the text string, and then subtract 1. For example, if the value in cell A2 is "156–" the following formula converts the text to the value –156.

LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)–1)*–1