LEFT
Return the first n characters of a piece of text.
Syntax
LEFT(text, [num_chars])| Argument | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
text | Required | The text to take from. |
num_chars | Optional | How many characters. Omitted, it returns one. |
Examples
Every example below was executed against VisiGrid engine 0.35.0 — not
transcribed from another vendor's documentation. Reproduce any of them with vgrid calc.
| Formula | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|
=LEFT("Spreadsheet",6) | Spread | |
=LEFT("Spreadsheet") | S | Omitting the count returns a single character. |
=LEFT("abc",10) | abc | Asking for more than there is returns everything, not an error. |
Where it earns its keep
Fixed-width data. Account codes with a two-letter prefix, product SKUs where the first three characters are the category, dates stored as text in a known layout:
=LEFT("2026-08-10", 4) → 2026For anything where the position varies, LEFT alone is not enough — you need
FIND to locate the boundary first.
It counts characters, not bytes
Accented letters and emoji count as one character each, which is what you want
and is not true of every spreadsheet’s implementation. LEFT("café", 4) returns
the whole word rather than a broken final character.
Excel compatibility
Matches Excel, including returning the whole string when num_chars exceeds its length.