Welcome to Excel Jet Consult. In this tutorial, we will learn how to Text.Start and Text.PositionOf Power Query M Functions which are LEFT & FIND functions in Excel
Text.Start returns the first count characters of text as a text value
Text.Start Syntax =Text.Start(text as nullable text, count as number)
Text.PositionOf returns the position of the specified occurrence of the text value substring found in text
Text.PositionOf Syntax = Text.PositionOf(text as text, substring as text, optional occurrence as nullable number, optional comparer as nullable function)
Below is the caption of the data we want to extract the left-most names such as Larry, Geoffrey etc.
To extract the left-most, click on Add column and select Custom Column
In the Custom Column dialogue box, provide the new column name First Name
In the custom column formula, execute: Text.Start([Full Name],Text.PositionOf([Full Name],”,”))
Click OK
First Name successfully extracted from the Full Name.