I have a spreadsheet with over 500 names in a single column, formatted in the following manner: William Smith. I need to reverse the order these names appear and have the last name and first name separated by a comma. Re: Smith, William
What is the most effective way to accomplish this task?
Thanks
What should happen with Names like »Adam B. Turner« or »Toove van der Dike« ??
The cells contain names beginning with the first name followed by middle name and last name. I need to reverse their entry so that the last name comes first, followed by first name then last name. The examples you have in your reply should appear like this: Turner, Adam B. - van der Dike, Toove. Not sure if “van der” is considered to be a middle name or if it is part of the surname. I am assuming it is part of the surname.
If you don’t know for sure, how can we manage it with simple pattern recognition?
The majority of names (99%) will consist of a first name, middle name, and last name. Any devotion from that will be handled as an outlier and corrected manually.
⇒Find and replace
find: "^(.*?) (\w*['’-]?\w+)$" #without quotes
replace: $2, $1
[x] selection only
[x] regular Expression
⇒⇒ replace all
Thanks, that was what I was looking for. It worked perfectly.