Try this with the nhame in D2

=IF(ISERR(FIND(" ",D2)),D2,MID(D2,FIND("^^",SUBSTITUTE(D2," ","^^",LEN(D2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2," ",""))))+1,1024))

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Regards Ron de Bruin
http://www.rondebruin.nl


"maryj" wrote in message ...
I have names of individuals in Column A. Some have only first and last,
others also include the middle initial. I want to extract the last name of
each person into Column B. I used the formula =RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-SEARCH("
",A1)) which works great for those names that don't include the middle
initial. How can I modify this to work for either situation? Thanks!!!
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maryj