Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Returning the Left-most Characters.
Sometimes you may need to create a worksheet formula that examines the left-most characters in a different cell. To allow for this need, Excel provides the LEFT worksheet function. You use it by specifying the cell or value to use, along with the number of character to return. For instance, the following formula returns the three left-most characters in cell A7:
=LEFT(A7,3)
If the value in A7 is not text, then LEFT still treats it as if it is. Thus, if A7 contains 12345, then the above formula returns the text value 123.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8806) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Returning the Left-most Characters.
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2016-07-05 08:19:38
Stu Cram
Should you ever need just the first (left-most) character of the string, then you can omit the second argument for the # of characters to extract.
example
cell A1: PDQ147RYT
Then this formula =LEFT(A1)
will have a result of just P
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: 
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