How to Use the LEFT, RIGHT, and MID Functions in Excel (Extract Text Easily)

How to Use the LEFT, RIGHT, and MID Functions in Excel (Extract Text Easily)

The LEFT, RIGHT, and MID functions help you extract parts of text from a cell in Excel. These are especially useful for cleaning data or isolating values like codes, names, or dates embedded in strings.

🔸 1. LEFT Function

=LEFT(text, num_chars)

Example: =LEFT("ExcelMagic", 5) → "Excel"

🔸 2. RIGHT Function

=RIGHT(text, num_chars)

Example: =RIGHT("ExcelMagic", 5) → "Magic"

🔸 3. MID Function

=MID(text, start_num, num_chars)

Example: =MID("ExcelMagic", 6, 3) → "Mag"

✅ Use Cases

• Extract first names or last names
• Isolate area codes or zip codes
• Separate fixed-length product IDs

💡 Tip:

You can combine these with LEN() and FIND() for more advanced text extraction.

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