Can I create and save a formula for text fields?

I have a text field that has "Lastname, Firstname" and I would like to create
a second field that just shows the first name. Since I have a lot of names in
this format, I was thinking that I could create some kind of text formula in
Excel that would equal the original text field and delete everything up to
the comma. Can Excel do this using wildcards? Any suggestions?

Highlight the cells and
go to <data><text to columns>
step one .........delimited
step two ..........comma
step three .......select where to place the split columns

--
Greetings from New Zealand
Bill K

"Jason" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have a text field that has "Lastname, Firstname" and I would like to
>create
> a second field that just shows the first name. Since I have a lot of names
> in
> this format, I was thinking that I could create some kind of text formula
> in
> Excel that would equal the original text field and delete everything up to
> the comma. Can Excel do this using wildcards? Any suggestions?

Jason,

=LEFT(A2,FIND(",",A2)-1)

If some of your entries don't have a comma, it'll error out. If that's a
possibilty, use:

=LEFT(A2,IF(ISERROR(FIND(",",A2)),LEN(A2),FIND(",",A2)-1))
--
Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com/
-------------------------------------------

"Jason" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have a text field that has "Lastname, Firstname" and I would like to
>create
> a second field that just shows the first name. Since I have a lot of names
> in
> this format, I was thinking that I could create some kind of text formula
> in
> Excel that would equal the original text field and delete everything up to
> the comma. Can Excel do this using wildcards? Any suggestions?