Extract the First Name from a Full Name

Excel & Google Sheets

How it works

The universal version works everywhere: FIND locates the first space in the name, and LEFT keeps everything before it — the -1 stops it from including the space itself. In Excel 365, TEXTBEFORE(A2," ") does the same thing more readably. In Google Sheets, REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"^[^ ]+") grabs the first run of non-space characters. All three return the first word, so "Mary Jane Watson" yields "Mary" — middle names stay behind.

FIND(" ",A2)

Finds the position of the first space — in "Ana Torres" that's 4.

-1

Steps back one character so the space isn't included.

LEFT(A2, …)

Keeps that many characters from the start: "Ana".

When to use it

Use this to build greeting columns, split imported contact lists, or normalize names before matching two systems. Pair it with an extract-last-name column to fully split names.

Common mistakes

• ✕Single-word names return #VALUE!.

  ✓FIND fails when there's no space. Guard it: =IFERROR(LEFT(A2,FIND(" ",A2)-1),A2) returns the whole name instead.

• ✕Names have leading spaces from an import.

  ✓" Ana Torres" returns an empty first name. Wrap the source in TRIM: =LEFT(TRIM(A2),FIND(" ",TRIM(A2))-1).