I'm not trying to divert you from Bernard's solution, but given you said you
were sort of new to Excel, I thought you might have missed the point behind
the formulas Harlan and I have been writing back and forth about,
particularly the last one by each of us. Each of them can retrieve the names
you are looking for without the need for a separately maintained "master
list" (that is, you do not need a Mylist like from Bernard's posting). Just
put either of our last formulas in A1 and then copy them down as needed.
They will retrieve, and re-order, whatever names are contained inside the
text in column A, as long as those names are separated by a comma followed
by a single space... and they will do it automatically, without needing a
separately maintained list to check against. By the way, the only difference
between Harlan's and my last posted formulas has to do with where the names
can occur within the text... my formula (a modification of Harlan's by the
way) will allow the names to be at the beginning of the text whereas
Harlan's requires some non-name text to precede the names.

Rick


"NunRacer" wrote in message
...
I think this is what i'm looking for now to make it work :)
I'm sort of new to excel.
Thanks everyone for the great responses.

"Bernard Liengme" wrote:

Somewhere in my workbook (it matter not where) I have a range called
Mylist.
I contains the names
Blow, Joe
Liengme, Bernard
Smith, Anne
Taylor, George

but, of course, it could be longer.

In A1 and A2 I have your data
3-PKR11500 TGDL1 TAYLOR, GEORGE 15:00 - 23:00 x
3-SP12300 TGDS2 BLOW, JOE 23:00 - 7:00 x


In B1 and B2 I call a UDF with =getname(A1,mylist)

The UDF is:

Function getname(mycell, mylist)
mycount = mylist.Count
getname = "not found"
For j = 1 To mycount
testname = UCase(mylist(j).Value)
whatname = mycell.Value
MyPos = InStr(whatname, testname)
If MyPos < 0 Then
getname = mylist(j)
Exit For
End If
Next
End Function

The formulas return the correct names from MyList

Need help with VBA? See David McRitchie's site on "getting started" with
VBA
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
Microsoft Excel MVP
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"NunRacer" wrote in message
...
I've tried searching for some solutions to my problem but havnt found
anything that really helps me.

I want to extract a persons name (the name is mixed up with other
useless
info, and doesnt follow the same format) from a cell that matches the
names i
have in a Database.

so example would be
3-PKR11500 TGDL1 TAYLOR, GEORGE 15:00 - 23:00 x
3-SP12300 TGDS2 BLOW, JOE 23:00 - 7:00 x
So i need a formula to pull the name out by comparing it to the
existing
names in the database.
The end result needs to be just their name.
Thank You.