Hi
try
=LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1)-1)

--
Regards
Frank Kabel
Frankfurt, Germany

Adam Cole wrote:
I'm using Excel 2003 and need to return the first eight characters
from a cell.

The "Left" function is fine for this but where the first word is less
than eight characters I only want to extract the first word and
"left" includes
the start of the second word!

Can anyone help?