EXCEL : Remove unwanted text Data in Excel with the LEFT Function

10: EXCEL : Remove unwanted text Data in Excel with the LEFT Function

At times, spreadsheet data carries unwanted characters or words included with the correct data.

Based on where such unwanted characters are located in the cell, Excel has functions which can be used to get rid of them.

• LEFT function - If you have unwanted characters on the left side of your good data
• RIGHT function - If you have unwanted characters on the left side of your good data
• MID function - If you have unwanted characters on both sides of your good data

Syntax for the LEFT Function
= LEFT ( text , num_chars )

text - the data you want to change which can be a cell reference pointing to where the data is stored.

num_chars - Number of characters to be retained from the text / cell specified above.

Example : Using LEFT Function to remove unwanted characters
See the image as well.

1. Column B contains data with unwanted characters on the right
2. In cell C3, enter the LEFT Function = LEFT (
3. In “text” , link the cell that carries the bad data, i.e Cell B3
4. On “num_chars”, give the no. of good characters on the left that need to be separated from bad. Enter the number 3 since we only want to keep the three leftmost characters of data.
5. Close ) and hit Enter.
6. The unwanted characters (^&%$) will be removed leaving just the number 100 in cell C3.
7. Drag the Cell C3 to to remaining cells (till C7)