· 1 months ago
I used the formula above, but if the person does not put a space between their first / last name, how do you keep that from error out?
How to extract initials from names in Excel?
When you are processing customer records or doing mail merge, getting initials from a given name may be useful for you, for instance, HG for Hal Greer. So here I introduce some tricks for you to quickly extract initials from the name list in Excel.
Extract initials with formula in Excel
Extract initials use Defined Function in Excel
Office Tab Enable Tabbed Editing and Browsing in Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier...
Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%
- Reuse Anything: Add the most used or complex formulas, charts and anything else to your favorites, and quickly reuse them in the future.
- More than 20 text features: Extract Number from Text String; Extract or Remove Part of Texts; Convert Numbers and Currencies to English Words.
- Merge Tools: Multiple Workbooks and Sheets into One; Merge Multiple Cells/Rows/Columns Without Losing Data; Merge Duplicate Rows and Sum.
- Split Tools: Split Data into Multiple Sheets Based on Value; One Workbook to Multiple Excel, PDF or CSV Files; One Column to Multiple Columns.
- Paste Skipping Hidden/Filtered Rows; Count And Sum by Background Color; Send Personalized Emails to Multiple Recipients in Bulk.
- Super Filter: Create advanced filter schemes and apply to any sheets; Sort by week, day, frequency and more; Filter by bold, formulas, comment...
- More than 300 powerful features; Works with Office 2007-2019 and 365; Supports all languages; Easy deploying in your enterprise or organization.
Extract initials with formula in Excel
First method is using formula to extract initials from names in Microsoft Excel.
Select a blank cell, for instance, Cell C2, type this formula =LEFT(A2)&IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ",A2)),MID(A2,FIND(" ",A2)+1,1),"")&IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ",A2,FIND(" ",A2)+1)),MID(A2,FIND(" ",A2,FIND(" ",A2)+1)+1,1),"")(A2 is the first cell of your name list), press Enter button, then drag the fill handle to fill the range. Now you see all initials of each name are extracted from the name list.
Extract initials use Defined Function in Excel
Besides formula, you can use the Defined Function to extract initials from specified names easily in Microsoft Excel.
1. Select a cell of the column you want to select and press Alt + F11 to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
2. In the pop-up window, click Insert > Module, then paste the following VBA code into the module.
VBA: Extract initials from names
Function FirstCharacters(pWorkRng As Range) As String
'Updateby20140514
Dim arr As Variant
Dim xValue As String
Dim OutValue As String
xValue = pWorkRng.Value
arr = VBA.Split(Trim(xValue))
For i = 0 To UBound(arr)
OutValue = OutValue & VBA.Left(arr(i), 1) & "."
Next
FirstCharacters = OutValue
End Function3. Save the code and close the window, select a blank cell and type this formula = FirstCharacters(A2), then press Enter button, and drag the fill handle to fill the range you want. After that, you can see the initials of each name are extracted.
Tip: You can change the separators "." of the initials as you need in the above VBA.
Relative Articles:
The Best Office Productivity Tools
Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%
- Reuse: Quickly insert complex formulas, charts and anything that you have used before; Encrypt Cells with password; Create Mailing List and send emails...
- Super Formula Bar (easily edit multiple lines of text and formula); Reading Layout (easily read and edit large numbers of cells); Paste to Filtered Range...
- Merge Cells/Rows/Columns without losing Data; Split Cells Content; Combine Duplicate Rows/Columns... Prevent Duplicate Cells; Compare Ranges...
- Select Duplicate or Unique Rows; Select Blank Rows (all cells are empty); Super Find and Fuzzy Find in Many Workbooks; Random Select...
- Exact Copy Multiple Cells without changing formula reference; Auto Create References to Multiple Sheets; Insert Bullets, Check Boxes and more...
- Extract Text, Add Text, Remove by Position, Remove Space; Create and Print Paging Subtotals; Convert Between Cells Content and Comments...
- Super Filter (save and apply filter schemes to other sheets); Advanced Sort by month/week/day, frequency and more; Special Filter by bold, italic...
- Combine Workbooks and WorkSheets; Merge Tables based on key columns; Split Data into Multiple Sheets; Batch Convert xls, xlsx and PDF...
- More than 300 powerful features. Supports Office/Excel 2007-2019 and 365. Supports all languages. Easy deploying in your enterprise or organization. Full features 30-day free trial. 60-day money back guarantee.
Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier
- Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
- Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
- Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
You are guest ( Sign Up? )
or post as a guest, but your post won't be published automatically.
Loading comment... The comment will be refreshed after 00:00.