I always like:

Dim FirstWord as string
FirstWord=Split(cell.value," ")(0)

NickHK

"Nikko963" wrote in message
oups.com...
This should be easy but I can't find a function in the online help to
accomplish this in Excel so your help would be appreciated:

I have a long list of customer names. Sometimes the same customer is
entered under slightly different names. For example, a customer may
appear as Starline Inc. in one place and Starline Publishing Inc. in
another.

I am writing a VB script that will scan through the column, take the
first word (up to the first space) and then use that to compare to
other similar selections to create a list of suspected matches that
need to be cleaned up.

My problem is that I can't find or think of a quick way to "select" the
first word in order to assign it to a variable. I'm sure it is
something simple that I am simply overlooking in the online help.

Thanks in advance for all your collective guruness.

Nikko