Final answer:
To extract the substring "dev" from the text string "deviation" in cell C2, the correct formula is =MID(C2, 1, 3). This uses the MID function to start at the first character and return the next three characters.
Step-by-step explanation:
To extract the substring "dev" from the text string "deviation" in cell C2 of a spreadsheet, you can use the MID function. The MID function is used to return a specific number of characters from a text string, starting at the position you specify. The syntax for the MID function is MID(text, start_num, num_chars), where text is the text string containing the characters you want to extract, start_num is the position of the first character you want to return, and num_chars is the number of characters to return from the text string.
In this case, you want to extract the first three characters from the text string in cell C2, so the correct formula would be: =MID(C2, 1, 3). This formula starts at the first character of the text in cell C2 and returns the next three characters, resulting in the substring "dev".