MS-Excel / Functions and Formula

Getting the First Word

If you want to return the first word from a text string, still using the text Our main business focus is Excel spreadsheets in cell A2, enter in the following function in cell B3:

=LEFT(A2,FIND(" ",A2)-1)

This formula will display the word Our in cell B3, by using a combination of the LEFT function (to return the first character or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify) and the FIND function to locate one text string within a second text string, and return the number of the starting position of the first text string from the first character of the second text string.

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In this tutorial:

  1. Extract Specified Words from a Text String
  2. Getting the Last Word
  3. Getting the First Word
  4. Get the Nth Word