Hello Everyone,

I'm a bit new to this discussion group, so please forgive me for any errors.
I have an unusual question for everyone in the community. I am working on
designing a customer list spreadsheet and one of the things that crossed my
mind was the way in which we enter a customer's name into the spreadsheet.

Currently, we are using a single column, which has the first, middle, and
last name listing into a single field. In other office environments that I
have been in, i have noticed that there are separate columns for each of the
three portions of the name i mentioned above.

Is there any particular advantage to having 3 columns for a customer name
versus having 1 column for a customer name.

I'd greatly appreciate the combined knowledge here to help me figure out the
advantages or disadvantages of using either methods.

Hopefully, what i've written makes sense, if not please tell me and I'll try
to explain some more. Thank you ahead of time for any response that you make
to help me out

If you have all names in one field, then sorting becomes a problem [ and we
frequently want to sort data, usually surname/firstname]; nor does it help
when you want to search(/filter) data or analyse the data using formulae.

I would simply follow what is good practice and have the names in separate
fields (columns).

"Al" wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I'm a bit new to this discussion group, so please forgive me for any errors.
I have an unusual question for everyone in the community. I am working on
designing a customer list spreadsheet and one of the things that crossed my
mind was the way in which we enter a customer's name into the spreadsheet.

Currently, we are using a single column, which has the first, middle, and
last name listing into a single field. In other office environments that I
have been in, i have noticed that there are separate columns for each of the
three portions of the name i mentioned above.

Is there any particular advantage to having 3 columns for a customer name
versus having 1 column for a customer name.

I'd greatly appreciate the combined knowledge here to help me figure out the
advantages or disadvantages of using either methods.

Hopefully, what i've written makes sense, if not please tell me and I'll try
to explain some more. Thank you ahead of time for any response that you make
to help me out

Use separate cells for each portion of the name.

Then you can sort by first, middle or last name.

Likewise with addresses.

Excel has lots of space so using one cell for a complete name doesn't do
anything but cause problems down the road when you want to manipulate the data.

Also most other programs you export to prefer separate fields.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:54:03 -0700, Al wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I'm a bit new to this discussion group, so please forgive me for any errors.
I have an unusual question for everyone in the community. I am working on
designing a customer list spreadsheet and one of the things that crossed my
mind was the way in which we enter a customer's name into the spreadsheet.

Currently, we are using a single column, which has the first, middle, and
last name listing into a single field. In other office environments that I
have been in, i have noticed that there are separate columns for each of the
three portions of the name i mentioned above.

Is there any particular advantage to having 3 columns for a customer name
versus having 1 column for a customer name.

I'd greatly appreciate the combined knowledge here to help me figure out the
advantages or disadvantages of using either methods.

Hopefully, what i've written makes sense, if not please tell me and I'll try
to explain some more. Thank you ahead of time for any response that you make
to help me out