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How to get the nth word from a sentence in Excel and Google Sheets
Topic:Text manipulationExcel & Google Sheets
=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",REPT(" ",100)),(2-1)*100+1,100))✓
Verified example
Computed by a real spreadsheet engine on the sample data below.
| Sentence |
| The quick brown fox |
| Hello world today |
| One two three four |
| Data is valuable |
=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",REPT(" ",100)),(2-1)*100+1,100))→quick
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Step by step
- 1Replace 2 in the formula with the word position you want (1 = first word, 2 = second word, etc.), or reference a cell containing the number.
- 2SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",REPT(" ",100)) expands each space to 100 spaces, padding every word to a known width.
- 3MID(...,(N-1)*100+1,100) extracts the Nth 100-character block.
- 4TRIM() removes all the padding spaces, leaving only the desired word.
- 5Use =TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",REPT(" ",100)),(B2-1)*100+1,100)) where B2 holds the word number for a dynamic version.
Tips
- In Google Sheets you can also use =INDEX(SPLIT(A2," "),1,N) which is simpler — SPLIT breaks the sentence into an array and INDEX picks the Nth element.
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Frequently asked
What happens if N is greater than the number of words?
The formula returns an empty string. Wrap in IFERROR or add an IF to check TRIM is non-empty before displaying the result.
Does this handle multiple consecutive spaces?
Not perfectly. Pre-clean the text with =TRIM(A2) to collapse multiple spaces to one before applying the word-extraction formula.
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