How Do You Separate First Names And Last Names Using Basic Functions?
Uses basic Excel Functions to separate First and Last Names (or any other text) • Adapt the following instructions to the current formating of the names in your list. This example is based on the format “Bond, James”. Illustrtated Example • Use the LEFT function to extract the first piece of text from the original, in this case the last name. • Use the MID function to extract the second piece of text from the original, in this case the first name. • Use the FIND function to tell LEFT and MID when to start and finish extracting characters within the original name. This function will be “nested” into the above functions. • The cell extracting the last name will look like this: =LEFT(B3,FIND(“,”,B3)-1) where B3 is the cell containing the original name The cell extracting the first name will look like this: =MID(B3,FIND(“,”,B3)+2,100), note that ‘100’ is used to capture everything left in the text string, assuming that no first name has more than 100 characters.
