You could use a macro with
instrev
InStrRev Function


Description

Returns the position of an occurrence of one string within another, from the
end of string.

Syntax

InstrRev(stringcheck, stringmatch[, start[, compare]])

The InstrRev function syntax has these named arguments:

Part Description
stringcheck Required. String expression being searched.
stringmatch Required. String expression being searched for.
start Optional. Numeric expression that sets the starting position for
each search. If omitted, -1 is used, which means that the search begins at
the last character position. If start contains
Null, an error occurs.

compare Optional. Numeric value indicating the kind of comparison to
use when evaluating substrings. If omitted, a binary comparison is
performed. See Settings section for values.

--
Don Guillett
SalesAid Software

"genkate" wrote in message
...
I have a list of names; want to split into 2 columns-surnames & everything
else. format is always: john q. public/john public/j. p. public,etc. no
suffixes, nothing is after surname. All I need to do is count to the first
space from the RIGHT. Can Excel do that?

Thanks!
Kate