Copying first three characters of text in a cell

[Kris]

I need to concatenate text from two cells but only the first three characters
from one of the cells. Other than subtracting the last 5 characters, is there
a simpler way?

A1 is "ABC1"
B1 is "XYZ RSTU"
I need to display in cell C1 this ABC1-XYZ
I've used this formula =A1&"-"&LEFT(B1, LEN(B1)-5)

Thanks

 

[HARSHAWARDHAN. S .SHASTRI]

Hi Kris,

Use following formula,

=A1&"-"&MID(B1,1,3)

H S Shastri



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[David Biddulph]

Why not just =A1&"-"&LEFT(B1, 3) ?

Hint:
LEFT is a standard Excel function, so if you don't know what it's doing,
look it up in Excel help. The same applies to LEN.
If you haven't used Excel help yet, I would heartily recommend it.

 

[David Biddulph]

Is there any advantage in using MID instead of LEFT?