Google Sheets makes life easy when it comes to doing some data slice and dice. It has tons of formulas and functionalities (some of them are even better than the ones in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets).
One such area where you may need some formula intervention could be when you have a list of Full Name (first name and last names) in a single column and you need to separate names into two columns I.e first name and last name (or email address into the username and domain name).
In this tutorial, I will show you simple and easy ways to separate a name into First and Last names in Google Sheets.
Use the Split Text into Columns Tool
A very powerful feature in Google Sheets is the ‘Split Text into Columns’ feature.
The split Text into Columns tool allows you to specify the delimiter that you want to use to split the text (names in our example).
Google Sheets then automatically uses the specified delimiter and splits the text.
Suppose you have the names as shown below, and you want to separate the name into first name, middle name, and last name.
Here are the steps to use ‘Split Text into Columns’ to separate first and last names:
- Select the column that contains the full name then copy all the names and past them into the first name column. ( This step is just for backup you can skip this step )
- Now select the First Name column that contains the full name that you want to split.
- Click on the data tab
- Click on the ‘Split Text into Columns’ option
- In the Separator box that appears, select Space as the delimiter
The above steps would instantly split the full name into first and last names (in different columns).
