First And Last Names

Pearson Software Consulting, LLC

Extracting First And Last Names

A frequent task many people encounter when working with lists of data in Excel is splitting full names
into the first-name and last name components. For example, a user may have full names like
"Pearson, Charles H" in column A, and needs to put the last name in column B, the first name in
column C, and the middle initial in column D. This page describes some worksheet formulas and
VBA procedures you can use to accomplish this. For a related procedure for working with telephone
numbers, see Parsing Telephone Numbers.
All of the functions and procedures on this page assume that your data is formatted as "LastName,
FirstName MiddleName". For example, "Pearson, Charles H". Suffixes like "Jr" are permitted in the
LastName, as are two word last names (e.g., St James) and hyphenated last names (e.g., Smith-
Cross). For example, all the the following names are valid.
Pearson
Pearson, Charles
Pearson, Charles H
Pearson, Charles Henry
Pearson Jr, Charles
St James, Michael
St James Jr, Michael
Smith-Cross, Linda K

Worksheet Functions
This section describes several worksheet functions you can use to split full names into the first and
last name components.
To return the last name of the full name in A2, use the following formula.
=LEFT(A2,IF(ISERROR(FIND(",",A2,1)),LEN(A2),FIND(",",A2,1)-1))
To return the first name of the full name in A2, use the following formula.
=TRIM(IF(ISERROR(FIND(",",A2,1)),A2,MID(A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+1,
IF(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2)),LEN(A2),
FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))-FIND(",",A2,1))))
To return the middle name of the full name in A2, use the following formula.
=TRIM(RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-IF(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A2,
FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))),LEN(A2),
FIND(" ",A2,FIND(" ",A2,FIND(",",A2,1)+2))-1)))
The results of these formulas are shown below:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm (1 of 4) [1/11/2007 2:54:10 PM]
First And Last Names





VBA Procedures
This section describes a VBA function you can use the split full names into the the first and last name
components. This procedure accepts a full name, as described above, and returns an array for four
elements -- the Last Name, the First Name, the Middle Initial, and the Suffix. Therefore, you will need
to enter this as an Array Formula. Suppose you want the four parts of the name in A2 to be returned
to B2:E2. First, select cells B2:E2, enter =ParseOutNames(A2) and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter rather
than just Enter.
The code recognizes the following suffixes:
JR, SR, II, III, IV
and any suffix beginning with a number (e.g., "4th").
The code will also convert all names to Proper Case.

Function ParseOutNames(FullName As String) As Variant

Dim FirstName As String
Dim LastName As String
Dim MidInitial As String
Dim Suffix As String
Dim Pos As Integer
Dim Pos2 As Integer
Dim Pos3 As Integer

Pos = InStr(1, FullName, ",", vbTextCompare)
If Pos = 0 Then
Pos = Len(FullName) + 1
End If
LastName = Trim(Left(FullName, Pos - 1))

Pos2 = InStr(1, LastName, " ", vbTextCompare)
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm (2 of 4) [1/11/2007 2:54:10 PM]
First And Last Names
If Pos2 Then
Pos3 = InStr(Pos2 + 1, LastName, " ", vbTextCompare)
If Pos3 Then
Suffix = Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos3)
LastName = Left(LastName, Pos3 - 1)
Else
Suffix = Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos2)
LastName = Left(LastName, Pos2 - 1)
End If
End If

Pos2 = InStr(Pos + 2, FullName, " ", vbTextCompare)
If Pos2 = 0 Then
Pos2 = Len(FullName)
End If

If Pos2 > Pos Then
FirstName = Mid(FullName, Pos + 1, Pos2 - Pos)
MidInitial = Right(FullName, Len(FullName) - Pos2)
End If

Pos = InStr(1, LastName, "-", vbTextCompare)
If Pos Then
LastName = Trim(StrConv(Left(LastName, Pos), vbProperCase)) & _
Trim(StrConv(Right(LastName, Len(LastName) - Pos), vbProperCase))
Else
LastName = Trim(StrConv(LastName, vbProperCase))
End If

FirstName = Trim(StrConv(FirstName, vbProperCase))
MidInitial = Trim(StrConv(MidInitial, vbProperCase))
Suffix = Trim(StrConv(Suffix, vbProperCase))
'
' suffix handling
'
Select Case UCase(Suffix)
Case "JR", "SR", "II", "III", "IV", "MD", "PHD", "PH.D", "M.D."

Case Else
If Not IsNumeric(Left(Suffix, 1)) Then
LastName = LastName & " " & Suffix
Suffix = ""
End If
End Select

ParseOutNames = Array(LastName, FirstName, MidInitial, Suffix)

End Function
The result of this formula are shown below:


http://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm (3 of 4) [1/11/2007 2:54:10 PM]
First And Last Names


For a related procedure for working with telephone numbers, see Parsing Telephone Numbers.

Created By Chip Pearson and Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
This Page: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm Updated: May 03, 2003
MAIN PAGE About This Site Consulting Downloads
Page Index Search Topic Index What's New Links Legalese And Disclaimers
chip@cpearson.com

Copyright 1997-2007 Charles H. Pearson


http://www.cpearson.com/excel/FirstLast.htm (4 of 4) [1/11/2007 2:54:10 PM]