Splitting first and last names in Microsoft Excel

	A	B	C
1	Mary Post Rogers	=LEFT(A1,SEARCH(" ",A1))	=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1) - SEARCH(" ",A1))
2	Peter Van Der Groff	Peter	Van Der Groff

If you are working with excel and are given a list of names - splitting them into first and last can present problems when people have multi-word last names or first names (example: James Van Der Beek).

Its not possible to catch all of these - so you should hand check your data, but you can split single word first names and multi-word last names using the formulas above. The formulas in the first row will identify a first name and multi-word last name in addition to single word first and last name individuals.