Today’s blog entry is Part Two of our four part Name List Workshop and covers how split names from one column into two separate ones.
Say you receive a name list and the names are all in Excel and both first and last names are all in column A. Your client has indicated, however, that they want the names stacked: First name on the top and last name on the bottom. You already know from reading Part One of our workshop that when badges need to have multiple lines of personalization each line needs to be in its own column.
So how can you do that easily and without getting a migraine in Excel?
Never fear! We’re going to walk you through the process step by step.
First, go ahead and open up your name list in Excel. Your names should all be in one column like this:
Go ahead and click on the “A” above the first name. That highlights the entire column. Now, go up to the menu bar and click on “Data”. Now go down and choose the option “Text to Columns”.
The next box that pops up is called “Convert Text to Columns Wizard” and will tell you that you are on step 1 of 3. No matter what, go ahead and click on “Next” to move to step 2.
Now, on step 2 of 3, uncheck the box next to “Tabs” and check the box next to “Space”. This tells the program that the character to read as the “splitter” is not a tab but a space. Before you click on next, look at the preview box. The names in that box will now shift to look similar to this:
Step 3 only requires that you hit “Finish”. Now your main page will change and your names will be split into separate columns based on where the spaces were. Most often this will be all you have to do. Occasionally you will have names that have a middle initial. Those you’ll need to manually fix but they don’t crop up that often.
Your new name list should look like this:
Once you save your newly formatted name list you are done and headache-free!
On Thursday we’ll cover combining names from two columns into one for Part Three of our Name List Workshop. In the meantime, if you have any formatting questions let us know with a comment or catch us on Twitter or Facebook!
Tags: badge, customer service, format, list, name badge, name list, name tag, promotion
Very true! Makes a change to see smoeone spell it out like that.
[...] List Formatting Name List Workshop – Lesson 1: The basics Name List Workshop – Lesson 2: Splitting one column into two Name List Workshop – Lesson 3: Combining two columns into one Name List Workshop – Lesson 4: [...]