I have a column of names Adams,John William which I wish to extract to
seperate columns John in a coloum and Adams in another.

Try Data/Text to Columns... Select Delimited, click Next, and check the
comma (and if desired, the space) characters. If you dont' want the
Middle name, click Next, select the third column and choose the Do Not
Import radio button then click Finish, otherwise, just click Finish.

In article ,
"bbc1" wrote:

I have a column of names Adams,John William which I wish to extract to
seperate columns John in a coloum and Adams in another.

The functions you'll need are probably LEFT(), MID(), RIGHT() and
FIND()

See Excel helpfile for syntax of each.

To "extract" the last name, you'll use something like:
=LEFT([source],FIND(",",[source],1))

To isolate the first name (after the comma) you would use the MID()
function. Set the starting point to once again FIND the comma but start
1 character after it. Then again FIND a space (" ") which is the first
character after the first name.


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