Question for the Direct Mail Merge Mavens

[Jason Fang]

Hi,

This is a question for all you mail merge mavens.  Property tax data is usually in the form <Owner Last Name> <Owner First Name> <Owner Middle Initial> ...  How do you rearrange the text string so that your letters are addressed to the first name first, last name second, ie <First Name> <Last Name>?  There's an excel formula for extracting the first word in a text string but I haven't found one that works for the second word.  Thoughts?

Jason

[Todd Plambeck]

Assuming the name is in cell A1:

First name: =MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1) +1,(FIND(" ",A1,FIND(" ",A1) +1))-(FIND(" ",A1)+1))

Last name: =LEFT(A1,FIND(" ",A1))

Replace the " " with the the appropriate delimiter, e.g. "," for a comma.