{"id":4129,"date":"2016-08-08T15:45:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T13:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/?p=4129"},"modified":"2023-11-30T21:21:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T20:21:09","slug":"extracting-data-with-excels-left-formula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/blog\/extracting-data-with-excels-left-formula\/","title":{"rendered":"Extracting Data with Excel’s LEFT Formula"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does it do?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It returns the first character or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify.<\/p>\n

Formula breakdown:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

=LEFT(text<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0[num_chars]<\/span>)<\/p>\n

What it means:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

=LEFT(look in this cell<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0extract X characters<\/span>)<\/p>\n

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There are times when you will need to extract the first few characters of text within a cell, e.g. From a serial number, part number, name, phone number etc.<\/p>\n

The LEFT\u00a0<\/b>formula in Excel can help you parse and extract the needed text easily.<\/p>\n

In our example below, we have a Part # which has 10 characters and we want to extract all the characters before the hyphen “-“.<\/p>\n

I explain how you can do this and please\u00a0go to the bottom of the page to see the animated gif tutorial:<\/p>\n

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