You can extract a substring before the first space in a text string using the LEFT() with the SEARCH(). Let us see the steps with an example. The below table shows a text string in cell A2. Here is how you can extract the substring before the first space in the specified text string and display the result in cell B2. • Step 1: Select the target cell B2, enter the below formula, and press Enter. =LEFT(A2,SEARCH(" ",A2)-1) First, the SEARCH() searches for “ “ in the given text, Christopher Columbus, and returns the position of its first occurrence, 12. The num_chars expression in the LEFT() deducts one from the SEARCH() to return the value of 11. And thus, the LEFT() returns an 11-character substring from the left of the given text, Christopher.