Hi J.E.
thanks for the correction. The first approach wans't meant to restrict the
output to only 8 characters but only to prevent an error if no space is
found.
the second one: Shame on me to mess up MIN and MAX :-)

--
Regards
Frank Kabel
Frankfurt, Germany

JE McGimpsey wrote:
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))