First and Last Names

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rst And Last Names

Pearson Software Consulting, LLC

Extracting First And Last Names

A frequent task many people encounter when working with lists of data in Excel is splitting full names

into the first-name and last name components. For example, a user may have full names like

"Pearson, Charles H" in column A, and needs to put the last name in column B, the first name incolumn C, and the middle initial in column D. This page describes some worksheet formulas and

VBA procedures you can use to accomplish this. For a related procedure for working with telephone

numbers, see Parsing Telephone Numbers.

All of the functions and procedures on this page assume that your data is formatted as "LastName,

FirstName MiddleName". For example, "Pearson, Charles H". Suffixes like "Jr" are permitted in the

LastName, as are two word last names (e.g., St James) and hyphenated last names (e.g., Smith-

Cross). For example, all the the following names are valid.

Pearson

Pearson, Charles

Pearson, Charles H

Pearson, Charles Henry

Pearson Jr, Charles

St James, Michael

St James Jr, Michael

Smith-Cross, Linda K

Worksheet Functions

This section describes several worksheet functions you can use to split full names into the first and

last name components.

To return the last nameof the full name in A2, use the following formula.

=LEFT(A2,IF(ISERROR(FIND(",",A2,1)),LEN(A2),FIND(",",A2,1)-1))

To return the first nameof the full name in A2, use the following formula.

=TRIM(IF(ISERROR(FIND(",",A2,1)),A2,MID(A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+1,

IF(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2)),LEN(A2),FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))-FIND(",",A2,1))))

To return the middle nameof the full name in A2, use the following formula.

=TRIM(RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-IF(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A2,

FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))),LEN(A2),

FIND(" ",A2,FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))-1)))

The results of these formulas are shown below:

ttp://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm (1 of 4) [1/11/2007 2:54:10 PM]
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/PhoneNum.htmhttp://www.cpearson.com/excel/PhoneNum.htm


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VBA Procedures

This section describes a VBA function you can use the split full names into the the first and last name

components. This procedure accepts a full name, as described above, and returns an array for four

elements -- the Last Name, the First Name, the Middle Initial, and the Suffix. Therefore, you will need

to enter this as anArray Formula. Suppose you want the four parts of the name in A2to be returned

to B2:E2. First, select cells B2:E2, enter =ParseOutNames(A2)and press Ctrl+Shift+Enterrather

than just Enter.

The code recognizes the following suffixes:

JR, SR, II, III, IV

and any suffix beginning with a number (e.g., "4th").

The code will also convert all names to Proper Case.

Function ParseOutNames(FullName As String) As Variant

Dim FirstName As String

Dim LastName As String

Dim MidInitial As String

Dim Suffix As StringDim Pos As Integer

Dim Pos2 As Integer

Dim Pos3 As Integer

Pos = InStr(1, FullName, ",", vbTextCompare)

If Pos = 0 Then

Pos = Len(FullName) + 1

End If

LastName = Trim(Left(FullName, Pos - 1))

Pos2 = InStr(1, LastName, " ", vbTextCompare)

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/array.htmhttp://www.cpearson.com/excel/array.htm


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If Pos2 Then

Pos3 = InStr(Pos2 + 1, LastName, " ", vbTextCompare)

If Pos3 Then

Suffix = Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos3)

LastName = Left(LastName, Pos3 - 1)

Else

Suffix = Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos2)

LastName = Left(LastName, Pos2 - 1)

End If

End If

Pos2 = InStr(Pos + 2, FullName, " ", vbTextCompare)

If Pos2 = 0 Then

Pos2 = Len(FullName)

End If

If Pos2 > Pos Then

FirstName = Mid(FullName, Pos + 1, Pos2 - Pos)

MidInitial = Right(FullName, Len(FullName) - Pos2)

End If

Pos = InStr(1, LastName, "-", vbTextCompare)If Pos Then

LastName = Trim(StrConv(Left(LastName, Pos), vbProperCase)) & _

Trim(StrConv(Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos), vbProperCase))

Else

LastName = Trim(StrConv(LastName, vbProperCase))

End If

FirstName = Trim(StrConv(FirstName, vbProperCase))

MidInitial = Trim(StrConv(MidInitial, vbProperCase))

Suffix = Trim(StrConv(Suffix, vbProperCase))

'

' suffix handling'

Select Case UCase(Suffix)

Case "JR", "SR", "II", "III", "IV", "MD", "PHD", "PH.D", "M.D."

Case Else

If Not IsNumeric(Left(Suffix, 1)) Then

LastName = LastName & " " & Suffix

Suffix = ""

End If

End Select

ParseOutNames = Array(LastName, FirstName, MidInitial, Suffix)

End Function

The result of this formula are shown below:



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First and Last Names

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