Skip to main content

Kutools for Office ā€” One Suite. Five Tools. Get More Done.

Get or extract the first word from text string in Excel

Author Xiaoyang Last modified

To extract all the first words from a list of text strings which are separated by spaces, the LEFT and FIND function in Excel can do you a favor.

doc-get-first-word-1

Get or extract all the first words from text strings in Excel

To deal with this job, you should combine the LEFT and FIND functions together, the generic syntax is:

=LEFT(text,FIND(" ",text)-1)
  • text: The text string or cell value that you want to use.

1. Please enter or copy the below formula into a blank cell:

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

2. Then, copy this formula to other cells that you want to use this formula, and all first words in the text strings have been extracted, see screenshot:

doc-get-first-word-2

Explanation of the formula:

FIND(" ",A2)-1: The FIND function is used to get the position of first occurrence of the space character, and subtract 1 to return the position of the last character of the first word.

LEFT(A2,FIND(" ",A2)-1): The LEFT function extracts the left-most characters based on the number of characters that returned by the FIND function.

Note: If there is only one word in the cell, this formula will return the #VALUE! error value as following screenshot shown:

doc-get-first-word-3

To fix this problem, you should embed the IFERROR function into the formula as this:

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

doc-get-first-word-4

Relative functions used:

  • FIND:
  • The FIND function is used to find a string within another string, and returns the starting position of the string inside another one.
  • LEFT:
  • The LEFT function extracts the given number of characters from the left side of a supplied string.

More articles:

  • Extract Nth Word From Text String In Excel
  • If you have a list of text strings or sentences, now, you want to extract the specific nth word from the list as below screenshot shown. This article, I will introduce some methods for solving this job in Excel.
  • Extract Last Line Of Text From A Multi-Line Cell
  • To extract the last line of text from a text string which is separated by line breaks, normally, there is no direct way for you to solve this. This article, I will introduce a formula to deal with this task in Excel.

The Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Excel - Helps You To Stand Out From Crowd

šŸ¤– Kutools AI Aide: Revolutionize data analysis based on: Intelligent Execution   |  Generate Code  |  Create Custom Formulas  |  Analyze Data and Generate Charts  |  Invoke Kutools Functionsā€¦
Popular Features: Find, Highlight or Identify Duplicates  |  Delete Blank Rows  |  Combine Columns or Cells without Losing Data  |  Round without Formula ...
Super VLookup: Multiple Criteria  |  Multiple Value  |  Across Multi-Sheets  |  Fuzzy Lookup...
Adv. Drop-down List: Easy Drop Down List  |  Dependent Drop Down List  |  Multi-select Drop Down List...
Column Manager: Add a Specific Number of Columns  |  Move Columns  |  Toggle Visibility Status of Hidden Columns  |  Compare Columns to Select Same & Different Cells ...
Featured Features: Grid Focus  |  Design View  |  Big Formula Bar  |  Workbook & Sheet Manager | Resource Library (Auto Text)  |  Date Picker  |  Combine Worksheets  |  Encrypt/Decrypt Cells  |  Send Emails by List  |  Super Filter  |  Special Filter (filter bold/italic/strikethrough...) ...
Top 15 Toolsets:  12 Text Tools (Add Text, Remove Characters ...)  |  50+ Chart Types (Gantt Chart ...)  |  40+ Practical Formulas (Calculate age based on birthday ...)  |  19 Insertion Tools (Insert QR Code, Insert Picture from Path ...)  |  12 Conversion Tools (Numbers to Words, Currency Conversion ...)  |  7 Merge & Split Tools (Advanced Combine Rows, Split Excel Cells ...)  |  ... and more
Use Kutools in your preferred language ā€“ supports English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, and 40+ others!

Kutools for Excel Boasts Over 300 Features, Ensuring That What You Need is Just A Click Away...

Office Tab - Enable Tabbed Reading and Editing in Microsoft Office (include Excel)

  • One second to switch between dozens of open documents!
  • Reduce hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day, say goodbye to mouse hand.
  • Increases your productivity by 50% when viewing and editing multiple documents.
  • Brings Efficient Tabs to Office (include Excel), Just Like Chrome, Edge and Firefox.