Extract data using Left, Right, Mid function

Left, Right, Mid function tutorial gives you an explanation regarding the string function. When working in the spreadsheet we sometimes need to extract the specific types of data from a string. What is substring? A substring is extracting some data from a particular cell which is a part of the text cell.

There is no such function as Substrings in Excel, there are basically three text functions LEFT, RIGHT, and MID.

Left Function

This function is used to substring data from the cell from the left. The Syntax for the Left function is =LEFT(text, num_characters) where the text refers to the cell you want to substring data. Num_characters refers to the number of characters you want to extract.

For example, in the given video we want to substring number 4551218 we will type the Syntax as

=LEFT(A4, 3) then the number 455 will be displayed.

This function is very simple because it only two pieces of information are needed in the string.

Right function

This function is used to substring data from the cell from the right. The Syntax for the Right function is =RIGHT (text, num_characters) where the text refers to the cell you want to substring data. Num_characters refers to the number of characters you want to extract.

For example, in the given video we want to substring number 4551218 we will type the Syntax as

=RIGHT (A4, 4) then the number 1218 will be displayed.

This function is very simple because it only two pieces of information are needed in the string. The Right function works exactly the same as the Left syntactically. Here we select the number from the end.

Mid Function

This function is used to substring data not from the left or from the right but from the center of the cell. Here as like Left and Right function where only 2 information was needed but in this function 3 information is needed to complete the syntax.

The Syntax used for the MID function is as follows =MID(text, start_num, num_characters) where the text refers to the cell from you want to extract the string. Start_num refers to the number from where you want to start extracting data. Num_characters refer to the number of characters you want to extract.

For example, from the video, the number is 4551218 we want to extract mid character from it so we will use the Syntax as

=MID (A4, 3,2) it will show 51 as the extracted string.

Conclusion:

Left, Right, Mid function when you have a large number of data. In real life, we cannot type formula for each and every cell practically it is impossible. So to carry out this work faster this video shows how you can substring a large number of data by using the formula once for each function.