- #Excel for mac indent not working on formula how to#
- #Excel for mac indent not working on formula full#
- #Excel for mac indent not working on formula code#
What it means to you is that you won't be able to use the results of your Left formulas in calculations or in other Excel functions that operate on numbers.
#Excel for mac indent not working on formula how to#
How to force the LEFT function to return a numberĪs you already know, the Excel LEFT function always returns text, even when you are pulling a few first digits from a number. The formula works with this logic: the LEN function gets the total number of characters in a string, then you subtract the number of unwanted characters from the total length, and have the LEFT function return the remaining characters.įor example, to remove the last 7 characters from text in A2, use this formula:Īs shown in the screenshot below, the formula successfully cuts off the " - ToDo" postfix (4 letters, a hyphen and 2 spaces) from the text strings in column A. LEFT( string, LEN( string) - number_of_chars_to_remove) Wrapping up, you can use this generic formula to get a substring that precedes any other character: The only difference is that you use the Search function to find out the position of the first hyphen ("-") rather than a space:
In the same fashion, you can extract the country codes from a column of telephone numbers. To improve the formula a bit further, get rid of the trailing space by subtracting 1 from the Search formula result (not visible in cells, trailing spaces may cause many problems especially if you plan to use the extracted names in other formulas): And now, you embed this formula in the num_chars argument of the LEFT function:
#Excel for mac indent not working on formula full#
Supposing the full name is in cell A2, the position of the space is returned by this simple formula: SEARCH(" ",A2)). If the first and last names are separated by a space, the problem boils down to working out the position of the space character in a string, which can be easily done by using either SEARCH or FIND function.
#Excel for mac indent not working on formula code#
The problem is that each name and each code contains a different number of characters, and therefore you cannot simply supply a predefined number to the num_chars argument of your Left formula like we did in the above example. For example, you may want to pull the first names from a column of full names or get the country codes from a column of phone numbers. In some cases, you may need to extract the part of the text string that precedes a specific character. How to extract a substring before a certain character How to use LEFT function in Excel - formula examplesĪpart from extracting text from the left of a string, what else can the LEFT function do? The following examples show how you can use LEFT in combination with other Excel functions to solve more complex tasks. If you are working with a numeric dataset and want the LEFT function to return a number, use it in conjunction with the VALUE function as demonstrated in this example. Important note! LEFT belongs to the category of Text functions, therefore the result of a Left formula is always a text string, even if the original value from which you extract characters is a number. The syntax of the LEFT function is as follows: The LEFT function in Excel returns the specified number of characters (substring) from the start of a string. Excel LEFT function not working - reasons and solutions.How to force the Excel LEFT function to return a number.How to remove the last few characters from a string.How to get substring before a certain character.How to use LEFT function in Excel - formula examples.In this tutorial, you will find a couple of basic Left formulas to understand the syntax, and then I will show you a few ways in which you can take the Excel LEFT function well beyond its basic usage. However, Excel LEFT is capable of much more than its pure essence. As its name suggests, the function allows you to extract a certain number of characters starting at the left side of a text string. The tutorial shows how to use the LEFT function in Excel to get a substring from the beginning of the text string, extract text before a certain character, force a Left formula to return a number, and more.Īmong many different functions that Microsoft Excel provides for manipulating text data, LEFT is one of the most widely used.
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