Turn Ms. Amy Smith and Mr. Tom Jones into Ms. Smith and Mr. Jones

**meyera** · 08-21-2012, 10:13 AM

Hi,

I have a long spreadsheet that has long salutations of the form "Ms. First Last and Mr. First Last." I want to use a formula to turn this into "Ms. Last and Mr. Last," but I'm having trouble figuring out how to demarcate the second space (i.e. I can get "Ms. and Mr. Tom Jones" but not a lot else).

I'd really appreciate your help! Thank you!

**Pete_UK** · 08-21-2012, 10:21 AM

With your names in A1, this will work with those two examples:

=LEFT(A1,SEARCH(".",A1))&MID(A1,SEARCH(" ",A1,5),255)

However, I suspect your real data might have a few more variations.

Hope this helps.

Pete

**meyera** · 08-21-2012, 10:25 AM

Thanks! That got me halfway there. My data now looks like "Ms. Smith and Mr. Tom Jones." Any chance you know how I can eliminate "Tom" here?

Thanks so much for your help!

**Pete_UK** · 08-21-2012, 10:30 AM

Ah, I didn't realise that both names were in the same cell - must read posts more carefully !!

I'll try a few things out and get back to you if I have any success.

Pete

**Pete_UK** · 08-21-2012, 01:25 PM

Hello again. This seems to work with data in that format:

=LEFT(A1,SEARCH(".",A1))&MID(A1,SEARCH(" ",A1,5)+1,SEARCH(" and ",A1)-SEARCH(" ",A1,5)+8)&MID(A1,1+FIND("~",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","~",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")))),255)

Hope this helps.

Pete

**meyera** · 08-21-2012, 01:31 PM

Wow, that is great! I added a &" "& to add a space between the first title and the first name, but besides that this worked perfectly.

Thank you so much!

**Cutter** · 08-21-2012, 09:06 PM

@ meyera

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Thanks.

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