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Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

John Michaloudis
There are times when you receive a data set of employee full names in one column and you want to separate the full name into first name and surname in separate columns.
Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns | MyExcelOnline Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns | MyExcelOnline

One way is to use the Power Query method, which is great if you have lots of data that gets added each day, week or month and simply want to Refresh your Query to get the output needed each time.

If you want to quickly split a cell’s full name into separate columns on an ad-hoc basis, then the Text to Columns is the way to go.

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns | MyExcelOnline

download excel workbook Text-to-Columns-Full-Names.xlsx

 

STEP 1: Highlight your column’s data that has the full names

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

 

STEP 2: Go to Data > Text to Columns

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

STEP 3: In Step 1 of 3 you need to select the Delimited button and press Next

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

 

STEP 4: In Step 2 of 3, you need to “check” the Tab and Space boxes and press Next

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

 

STEP 5: In Step 3 of 3 you need to press the Finish button

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

 

This will split the column into two columns, separating the first from the second name.  You can go ahead and change the column headings to get the following result:

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

 

Split First & Last Name Using Text to Columns

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John Michaloudis is a former accountant and finance analyst at General Electric, a Microsoft MVP since 2020, an Amazon #1 bestselling author of 4 Microsoft Excel books and teacher of Microsoft Excel & Office over at his flagship MyExcelOnline Academy Online Course.

See also  Dynamic Data Validation List

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