Can Excel separate first name and last name into two columns from one?

I get this question again and again so I decided to make this tutorial for everyone to see how easy it is to do in Excel – kind of you make Excel do your work for you.

If you prefer to see it as a video with me doing it on screen, just click the picture like this on slide 4

The first thing you need to do in Excel 2010 is insert a column to the right of the column that you want to split.

With your cursor still on selected area, right click your mouse and ‘Insert’.

Here you have two blank columns. (I know one is enough, but if it was not,

Excel would override whatever it is in the next column, so I am just teaching you to be safe and

not lose any data in your files) Select the column with Contact info.

Click the picture to watch this done by me on video

Go to Data menu on your ribbon in Excel 2010. Click on ‘Text To Columns’ button in the middle of it, choose ‘Delimited’, click ‘Next’ two times.

Specify what separator should Excel use to break first name and last name. In my example I used space – the most logical separator in this case.

Your next step is to click ‘Next’ and Excel will do your work for you – no matter if it is only 10 records or 100,000 records, you will not have to do any manual work – Excel will do your work for you.

Now type up new headers for your two columns ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ and you are done.

Click the picture to see a video how to separate data from one columns into two in Excel 2013