Left function

Returns a Variant (String) containing a specified number of characters from the left side of a string.

Syntax

Left( string, length )

The Left function syntax has these arguments:

Argument	Description
string	Required. String expression from which the leftmost characters are returned. If string contains Null, Null is returned.
length	Required. Variant (Long). numeric expression indicating how many characters to return. If 0, a zero-length string ("") is returned. If greater than or equal to the number of characters in string, the entire string is returned.

Remarks

To determine the number of characters in string, use the Len function.

Note:  Use the LeftB function with byte data contained in a string. Instead of specifying the number of characters to return, length specifies the number of bytes.

Query example

Expression	Results
SELECT Left(ProductID,3) AS FromLeft FROM ProductSales;	Returns '3' characters from left side of the values in the field "ProductID" from table "ProductSales" in column FromLeft.

VBA example

Note: Examples that follow demonstrate the use of this function in a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) module. For more information about working with VBA, select Developer Reference in the drop-down list next to Search and enter one or more terms in the search box.

This example uses the Left function to return a specified number of characters from the left side of a string.

Dim AnyString, MyStr
AnyString = "Hello World"    ' Define string.
MyStr = Left(AnyString, 1)    ' Returns "H".
MyStr = Left(AnyString, 7)    ' Returns "Hello W".
MyStr = Left(AnyString, 20)    ' Returns "Hello World".

String functions and how to use them