The LEFT function in Google Sheets is used to extract a specified number of characters from the beginning (left side) of a text string.

It takes two arguments: the string from which you want to extract characters and an optional numberofcharacters parameter specifying how many characters you want to extract. If the numberofcharacters parameter is

omitted, LEFT will return the leftmost character of the string.

Here's the syntax of the LEFT function:

LEFT(string, [numberofcharacters])

string: The text or cell reference containing the string from which you want to extract characters.

numberofcharacters (optional): The number of characters you want to extract from the left side of the string. If omitted, it defaults to 1.

Here are a few examples to illustrate the usage of the LEFT function:

=LEFT("Hello, World!", 5)

This formula will return the first 5 characters from the left side of the string "Hello, World!", which is "Hello".

=LEFT(A1)

Assuming cell A1 contains the text "OpenAI", this formula will return the first character from the left side of the cell, which is "O".

=LEFT("Google Sheets")

This formula will return the first character from the left side of the string "Google Sheets", which is "G".

Note that if the numberofcharacters parameter is greater than the length of the string, the LEFT function will return the entire string.