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LEFT()

Returns a substring from the beginning of a specified string.

Syntax
fx
=LEFT(string, [number_of_characters])
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Acme
Sample data · sales.csv
ABCD
1CompanyRegionQuarterRevenue
2Acme CoWestQ118,400
3Acme CoWestQ222,100
4Acme CoWestQ331,700
5Acme CoWestQ448,200
6GlobexEastQ114,200
7GlobexEastQ219,800
8GlobexEastQ323,400

Common pitfalls

  • Negative or zero second-arg returns an empty string. To handle missing args defensively, default with LEFT(x, IFERROR(n, 0)).
  • Counts UTF-16 code units, not bytes. CJK characters count as one, but emoji using surrogate pairs (e.g. 😀, 🎉) count as 2: LEFT("😀abc", 2) may return only the first half of the emoji.
Related formulas
RIGHT()
Returns a substring from the end of a specified string.
MID()
Returns a segment of a string starting at a given position, for a given length.
Used by
RIGHT()
Returns a substring from the end of a specified string.
LEN()
Returns the number of characters in a string.
MID()
Returns a segment of a string starting at a given position, for a given length.
REPLACE()
Replaces part of a string with another string at a specific character position.
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