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Document Solutions for Excel, .NET Edition Overview
Key Features
Getting Started
Features
Templates
Formula Reference
- Add-in and Automation Functions
- Compatibility Functions
- Database Functions
- Date and Time Functions
- Engineering Functions
- Financial Functions
- Information Functions
- Logical Functions
- Lookup and Reference Functions
- Math and Trigonometry Functions
- Statistical Functions
- Text Functions
  - ARRAYTOTEXT
  - ASC
  - BAHTTEXT
  - CHAR
  - CLEAN
  - CODE
  - CONCAT
  - CONCATENATE
  - DBCS
  - DOLLAR
  - EXACT
  - FIND
  - FINDB
  - FIXED
  - JIS
  - LEFT
  - LEFTB
  - LEN
  - LENB
  - LOWER
  - MID
  - MIDB
  - NUMBERVALUE
  - PROPER
  - REPLACE
  - REPLACEB
  - REPT
  - RIGHT
  - RIGHTB
  - SEARCH
  - SEARCHB
  - SUBSTITUTE
  - T
  - TEXT
  - TEXTAFTER
  - TEXTBEFORE
  - TEXTJOIN
  - TEXTSPLIT
  - TRIM
  - UNICHAR
  - UNICODE
  - UPPER
  - VALUE
  - VALUETOTEXT
- Web Functions
File Operations
Document Solutions Data Viewer
API Reference
Release Notes

LEFT

This function returns the specified leftmost characters from a text value.

Syntax

LEFT(mytext, [num_chars])

Arguments

This function has these arguments:

Argument	Description
mytext	[Required] Text string that contains the characters you want to extract.
num_chars	[Optional] Number of characters to extract; if omitted, uses one; if not an integer, the number is truncated

The mytext argument can be a string, a formula that returns a string, or a reference to a cell containing a string.

The num_chars argument has these rules:

It must be greater than or equal to zero.
If it is greater than the length of text, this function returns all the text.

Examples

LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)

LEFT(R2C1,LEN(R2C1)-1)

LEFT("TotalPrice") gives the result T

LEFT("Total Price", 5) gives the result Total