Using Text to Columns to Separate Data

Revisiting the Full Name Separation IssueAs we talked about in the previous post, many times you will run across the need to separate a full name into first and last name.  Let’s take a look at a few screen shots to walk us through this process

Here’s our spreadsheet to begin with.  You’ll see that we have full names in our first column.  Our end goal is to have the first names in column A and the last names in Column B.

Next you’ll need to highlight Column A and go to Data–>Text To Columns and the window below will pop up.

Above is the Text To Columns wizard.  In this example we want to choose “Delimited”, because our Full Name is delimited by a space between the first and last name.  Hit Next…

By default, the Tab Delimiter is selected.  Check the box marked “Space”.  And click Next…

Finally, the wizard asked if you want to format the data at all.  In our example, general formatting is just fine.  So all we need to do is press “Finish”.  And the result can be seen below.