Finding characters within a string

QuestionEdit

How can I find the location of the first space or a period in a name field using one command?

AnswerEdit

Hello Roger Bell,

I don't know what a name field is, so I will have to make an assumption. I will assume cell A2 contains someone's name and you want to find the first space in the name

=Find(" ",A2)

for a period

=Find(".",A2)

if the item might not be found, Find will return an error. You can trap for that

=IF(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A2)),"",FIND(" ",A2))

If those don't answer your question, please post back with a clarification and perhaps an example. The more specific you are, the less I have to make assumptions which might be inconsistent with your question.