Truncating MySQL fields

[Guest_imported]

How do you truncate the contents of a database field so that only the first 60 characters are displayed rather than the whole thing....I have a text field and a blob field and when that contains a lot of data it throws off the display of my entire table when I want to look at it, etc.

Any help would be appreciated...

Thanks.

 

[Guest_imported]

select distinct left([field_name], 60) from [table_name];

OR

select substring([field_name], 1, 60) as b from [table_name]
group by b;

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks....I'll try it...