LEFT() and RIGHT() Function
Introduction
Hi everyone! I haven't posted in a while as I've been busy with school, but I'll try my best to post more often from here on out. In this post, I'll explain what the LEFT() and RIGHT() functions are. They are very easy to use and can be useful if you want to split up a text into a separate cell.
LEFT()
The LEFT() function returns the number of characters from the left side of the text.
Consider this example:
Let's say I want to get my first name.
I know I can just type in "Dylan". But, we shouldn't do things manually because if we get a big dataset with hundreds of names, it's gonna be hard to manually type every single first name in. Luckily, we can use the LEFT() function.
Here's the syntax: LEFT(text, num_chars)
"text" represents the text value.
"num_chars" represents the number of characaters from the left of the string.
So, since my first name is 5 characters long, we can do this:
... and bam! We got the first name:
RIGHT()
The RIGHT() function works the EXACT same way as LEFT(), but this time, it returns the number of characters from the right side of the text instead of the left.
The syntax is the same: RIGHT(text, num_chars)
I could use this function to get my last name. Because my last name is 4 characters long, we can do this:
This will get the last 4 characters of the text, which is "Song":
It's that simple!
Conclusion
Thank you for reading and I hope this was helpful! In my next post, I'll talk about a tool that you should use that will help you write any Excel formula, so stay tuned for that!