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Help with formula to extract first name only from email 'sender' field.

  • July 14, 2026
  • 1 reply
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Hi everyone, I hope you can help.

I have an create record automation that enters the full name from the ‘sender’ field in email headers. I then have a formula field to display their firstname only. The formula looks like this:

LEFT(TRIM({FullName}), FIND(" ", TRIM({FullName})) - 1)
 
This is great when the ‘sender’ name field has the format:
“Joe Bloggs” (Firstname[space]Lastname).
 
However, some emails have the ‘sender’ name as “Bloggs, Joe”
(Surname[comma][space]Lastname)
or ... 
“Bloggs, Joe (Acme Ltd)”
Surname[comma][space]Lastname[space][open-bracket)Company[closed-bracket]”
 
I’m wondering if there is an IF formula (or similar) that would be able to deal with these specific differences, allowing me to extract only the first name?
Very many thanks in advance. 🙏🏼

1 reply

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  • July 14, 2026

Yes, you can do that. You will need nested "if" statements. In the first "if" condition, use "find()" to search for ""("". If it finds a match, you are in the third option. In the nested "if" statement, use "find()" to search for "","". If it exists, you are in the second option; otherwise, you have the first option.

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