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How to separate names in Excel

The Split Names tool quickly divides first, last, and middle names as well as salutations, titles, and courtesy suffixes from one cell into individual cells.

Before you start

Please bear in mind that the add-in doesn't process merged cells.

If the data to split contain such cells, the tool will notify you. We recommend unmerging the cells beforehand or selecting the necessary range with names after running the add-in.

How to split names into new columns

Start the Split Names tool

Run the utility by clicking the Split Names icon in the Text group on the Ablebits Data tab:
Split Names in the Text group on the Ablebits Data tab.

Or find the same icon in the Transform group on the Ablebits Tools tab:
Split Names in the Transform group on the Ablebits Tools tab.

Separate names into columns

You will see a small window with a few options:
Select the range and choose the columns you want to see.

  1. Click the Expand selection icon and have the entire column selected automatically.
  2. Use the Select range icon to pick the necessary column in the dialogue box:
    Highlight the columns with names you want to split.
  3. If the top cell in the selected range is a label, select the checkbox My table has 1 header row.
    Tip. If there are more header rows in your table, click on that "1 header row" phrase, enter the number of lines with labels, and they won't be pulled apart:
    Change the number of header rows in a column with names.
  4. Select the checkboxes with all the name parts you would like to divide into new columns: the add-in recognizes over 80 kinds of Salutations / titles, First names, Middle names, Last name prefixes, Last names, Initials, and/or over 30 kinds of Name suffixes / post-nominal letters.

Click Split and see the columns with the selected name units inserted to the right of your original column.