How to Use the LEFT Function in Excel (Extract Text from the Start)

How to Use the LEFT Function in Excel (Extract Text from the Start)

The LEFT() function in Excel is used to extract a specific number of characters from the beginning (left side) of a text string.

📘 Syntax:

=LEFT(text, num_chars)

✅ Example:

=LEFT("HR2025EMP", 2)

This will return "HR", the department prefix from the full employee code.

🎯 Use Cases:

• Extract department or country codes
• Clean up large Excel files with structured text
• Split first names or prefixes from full names

💡 Bonus Tip:

You can combine LEFT with FIND() or SEARCH() to extract text before a specific character like a hyphen or space.

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