Excelspreadsheet~10 mins

LEFT, RIGHT, MID extraction in Excel - Cell-by-Cell Formula Trace

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Sample Data

Column A contains text strings. Column B contains numbers representing how many characters to extract.

Cell	Value
A1	HelloWorld
A2	ExcelFun
A3	Spreadsheet
B1	5
B2	3
B3	6

Formula Trace

=LEFT(A1, B1)

Step 1: LEFT("HelloWorld", 5)

Cell Reference Map

    A          B
1 | HelloWorld | 5 |
2 | ExcelFun  | 3 |
3 | Spreadsheet| 6 |

The formula uses cell A1 for the text and B1 for the number of characters to extract from the left.

Result

    A          B     C
1 | HelloWorld | 5 | Hello |
2 | ExcelFun  | 3 |       |
3 | Spreadsheet| 6 |       |

The formula in C1 shows "Hello", the first 5 characters extracted from A1.

Sheet Trace Quiz - 3 Questions

Test your understanding

What does the formula =LEFT(A2, B2) return?

A"Fun"

B"Exc"

C"Excel"

D"FunExc"

Key Result

LEFT(text, n) extracts first n characters; RIGHT(text, n) extracts last n characters; MID(text, start, n) extracts n characters starting at position start.