Dave, your formula worked just fine. Here's a new wrinkle for you: can I add
to the forumal by using OR? Or is there any way to have a second condition
to the data validation?

Now that I'm forcing users to enter Last, First they should also enter data
on the correct page. Page A-G, H-Q, and R-Z. If someone entered 'James,
Jesse' on R-Z can there be an alert saying wrong page?

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

You could use data|validation with a custom formula like:

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH(",",A1))

But what about Cher and Madonna? <vbg

If I were setting this up, I would use two (or more) columns. One dedicated to
the first name and one dedicated to the last name.

It could make further processing much more simple.

JSnow wrote:

I would like to 'police' some of the content my users enter. They're
supposed to enter names thusly: Last, First. However, some are entering
First Last.

Is there a way to have an alert pop-up if no comma is detected in the cell?
Excel's help notes on data validation are surpisingly thin.

I'm using column C starting with row 3 and continuing till 200 or son.

Thanks gang.

--

Dave Peterson