Group words in word 2013 update#

The FIND part of the formula is used to find the position of the space character in the text string. The below formula will do this: =IFERROR(LEFT(A2,FIND(' ',A2)-1),A2) Suppose you have the following dataset, where you want to get the first word from each cell. Using Flash Fill (Fastest and Easiest Method)Įxtract the First Word Using Text Formulas.Using Find and Replace and Wild Character Technique.So these are three simple methods to extract the first word from a text string in Excel. In case you don’t see the gray line, use the Flash Fill option in the ribbon.

That is the result you will get if you hit the enter key right away. Note: When typing the expected result in the second cell in column B, you may see all text in all the cells in a light gray color. Just make sure to double-check that the results are as expected. The above steps would fill all the cells with the first word from the adjacent column (column A).Ĭaution: In most cases, Flash Fill works fine and gives the correct result, but in some cases, it may not give you the right result.

In the Editing group, click on the Fill drop-down.

In cell B2, which is the adjacent column of our data, manually enter ‘Marketing’ (which is the expected result).

It helps in text manipulation by identifying the pattern that you’re trying to achieve and fills it for the entire column.įor example, suppose you have the below dataset and you want to only extract the first word. Extract the First Word Using Flash FillĪnother really simple and fast method to extract the first word using Flash Fill.įlash Fill was introduced in Excel 2013 and is available in all the versions after that. So when we ask Excel to find cells that contain space character followed by the asterisk sign and replace it with blank, it finds the first space character and removes everything after it – leaving us with the first word only.Īnd in case you a cell that has no text or only one word with no space characters, the above steps would not make any changes to it. The asterisk sign (*) is a wild card character that represents any number of characters. In Find what field, we have used a space character followed by the asterisk sign. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Control + H to open the Find and Replace dialog box. The above steps would remove everything except the first word in the cells.

In the Find what field, enter * (one space character followed by the asterisk sign).

This will open the Find & Replace dialog box.

In the Editing group, click on Find and Select option and then click on Replace.

Select all the cells in Column B where you want to get the first word.

This is to make sure that we have the original data as well.

Copy the text from column A to column B.

Suppose you have the dataset as shown below:īelow are the steps to use Find and Replace to only get the first word and remove everything else: Extract the First Word Using Find and ReplaceĪnother quick method to extract the first word is to use Find and Replace to remove everything except the first word. In case you don’t want the formula, you can convert it into values.

Group words in word 2013 update#

This means that in case you change the original text string in the cells in column A, the formula in column B will automatically update and give the correct result. One good thing about this method is that the result is dynamic. To handle this situation, I have wrapped the LEFT formula in the IFERROR formula, which simply returns the original cell content (as there are no space characters indicating that it’s either empty or has only one word). While the LEFT formula alone should be enough, it will give you an error in case there is only one word in the cell and no space characters. When the formula finds the position of the space character, the LEFT function is used to extract all the characters before that first space character in the text string.