On Sun, 3 Sep 2006 15:39:24 +0300, "Tom G." wrote:

I have a column with a variety of first and last name variations:

Joe Smith
Joe John Jones
Tom Jack Stuart Apple
Maria Lois Lane
Johann Sebastian Bach


I need to be able to sort them on their last name. Note that there is no
comma separating their names and that there can be any number of names,
HOWEVER, the last name always appears LAST.

Probably, in order to make some sort of order out of this mess, it would be
best if I create two separate columns: first names, last name.

Any help will be appreciated.

Have you tried "Text to Columns" under Data?

Select only the cells containing the data you want to modify, then choose
"Text to Columns" under "Data". If your data is formatted consistently,
this should do what you want to do.

Tip: if you have a last name like "van Patten", you can change the space
between the 2 words to an underscore, and Excel will treat that entire
string (van_Patten) as a single word.

Then after you've finished moving the data, do a global search and replace
to change underscores back into single spaces.




Tom

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