» Extracting a substring

Problem:

Listed in column A are full or first names.
How could we create a new column B containing the first names extracted from each name in column A?

Solution:

Using the FIND, RIGHT and LEN text category functions in this IF statement:
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("","",A2)),RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("","",A2)-1),A2)

Example:

Names_______________First Names
Bush, George________George
Seinfeld, Jerry_____Jerry
Jordan, Michael_____Michael
Laura_______________Laura
Kate________________Kate

Screenshot // Extracting a substring