How to Extract the First Word of a String in Microsoft Excel

1. Click in the cell to the right of the one you want to edit. For example, click in B2 if you want to extract the first word from cell A2.
2. Enter the following formula and then press the 'Enter' key:=LEFT(A2,FIND(' ',A2)-1)This tells Excel to find the first word in the word string in cell A2 and to extract it to cell B2 for our example.
3. Copy the formula and apply it to all cells in the preceding column. To do that, hover your mouse over the black square in the lower right corner of the cell. When your mouse pointer changes to a plus symbol, click your mouse and drag down.