I like the approach, but neither of those work.

Both, if the first space in the cell is after character 9 (or there is
no space) return a too-long string.

You could fix the first with

=LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",LEFT(A1,8)&" ")-1)

The second one can be fixed by using MIN instead of MAX.

=LEFT(A1,MIN(8,FIND(" ",A1&" ")-1))

In article ,
"Frank Kabel" wrote:

Hi J.E. maybe with error checking:
=LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1&" ")-1)
or
=LEFT(A1,MAX(8,FIND(" ",A1&" ")-1))