Debbie Mayo Smith - July 2012 - How to split names

How To Automatically Split Names Apart in Excel

I'm sure you have had this problem before.

You've kept or received an event attendee list where the full name was in one column. However you need the name separated into two columns, first and last.

Well,  let me take you back to 2001. 10 PM, a Thursday evening. All six kids were in bed. My husband walked into the living room, looked over my shoulder and exclaimed "Debbie, what the heck are you doing"?

I was sitting with my laptop working in an Excel spreadsheet.  "Oh honey, I want to do a personalised email merge tomorrow, and I have over 3000 first and last names I need to split apart." I replied.

As you know, this frustrating manual copy paste delete exercise was going to take hours and hours.

"Don't do that" Steve exclaimed, "do text to columns"!

Watch this 44 second video to find out the three click wizard Steve showed me to automatically separate first and last names -whether you have five or five thousand!  Here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vrQeACmhjQ

P.S. If you would like the video, or YouTube is blocked, please email me to send it to you [email protected]

Debbie Mayo-Smith is one of the most sought after international speakers in Australasia,, due to her practical, easy how-to presentations showing how to free up time and boost revenues and customer service as a result of simply using one's everyday buseinss tools better. Sign up for her quick tip newsletter here  http://www.debbiespeaks.co.nz