Hello i am just starting to learn about arduino and have been trying to write to an l.c.d using downloaded  code but the first characters are missing.

Any suggestions would be useful.

Thanks.

Hi jim, you don't say which board you are using but i suspect it's an initialisation issue.
if you have faster arduino clone it may be sending the commands to quickly for the lcd or the lcd is slow to initialise and misses the first characters.
Try putting this line:-

delay(1000);

after the line with the lcd.begin() instruction, this will delay the first characters by 1 second, if that works experiment with the delay period.

Hope this helps.
 

Thanks worked a treat.