How to Get the First Word from a String

Extracting the first word is often used to get a person's First Name from a full name column.

The Logic

We use a combination of LEFT and FIND functions:

1. FIND(" ", A2): This tells us the position number of the first space character.
2. LEFT(A2, Position - 1): This extracts everything from the left up to (but not including) that space.

Edge Case: Single Words

Note: If the cell contains only one word (no spaces), this formula might return an error. You can wrap it in IFERROR to handle single-word cells gracefully.