LEFT( )
Extracts a substring from a string, starting from the left‑most, or first, character.
Syntax
LEFT(source)
LEFT(source, n)
Arguments
source
The string from which to extract a substring.
n
The number of characters to extract, starting from the first character.
Returns
A substring of a specific length.
If you omit n, the number of characters to extract, the function returns the first character only.
If n is zero, the function returns an empty string.
If n is greater than the length of the string, the function returns the entire string.
Example
The following example displays the first letter of each name in the CustomerName field:
LEFT([CustomerName])
The following example uses the LEFT( ) and FIND( ) functions to display the characters that precede the hyphen in a product code:
LEFT([ProductCode], FIND("‑", [ProductCode]))
If the product code is ModelA‑1234, the expression returns the following string:
ModelA