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LEFT vs MID: extracting text from a start point in Excel and Sheets
Excel & Google Sheets
=MID(A2,5,4)✓
Verified example
Computed by a real spreadsheet engine on the sample data below.
| Code |
| PRD-2024-001 |
| SVC-2023-999 |
| INV-2025-042 |
=MID(A2,5,4)→2024
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Step by step
- 1Put a text string in A2, for example "PRD-2024-001".
- 2To extract the first 3 characters ("PRD"), use =LEFT(A2,3).
- 3To extract the year "2024" starting at position 5, use =MID(A2,5,4). The second argument is the start position (1-based); the third is the number of characters.
- 4To extract the last segment when its length varies, combine MID with LEN: =MID(A2,LEN(A2)-2,3) extracts the last 3 characters, though RIGHT is cleaner for that case.
- 5Chain FIND or SEARCH to locate a delimiter dynamically, then pass the result +1 as MID's start position: =MID(A2,FIND("-",A2)+1,4) extracts "2024" regardless of what precedes the first hyphen.
Tips
- MID never returns an error if start_num or num_chars exceeds the string length — it simply returns what is available or an empty string. Use LEN to validate when exactness matters.
- For fixed-width codes, LEFT/MID/RIGHT are faster and more readable than a SUBSTITUTE or REGEX approach. Reserve regex for variable-structure strings.
- In Google Sheets you can use REGEXEXTRACT as an alternative to complex MID+FIND chains, but LEFT/MID remain universally compatible with Excel.
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Frequently asked
Is LEFT(A2,3) exactly the same as MID(A2,1,3)?
Yes, they produce identical results. LEFT is just a more readable shorthand when you always start from position 1.
How do I extract text between two delimiters?
Use MID combined with two FIND calls: =MID(A2,FIND("-",A2)+1,FIND("-",A2,FIND("-",A2)+1)-FIND("-",A2)-1) extracts the segment between the first and second hyphen.
Do LEFT and MID count bytes or characters for multi-byte text?
They count characters (Unicode code points). For byte-level extraction of double-byte text, use LEFTB and MIDB in Excel — these are not available in Google Sheets.