Separating Names in Query 1

[kentwoodjean]

I have looked at several posts and Thread 701-794191 is most applicable to my situation. The only thing that is does not address is when you have a name formatted as:

O Donnell John.

I want a first name, Last Name, Mid Initial columna and then I will need to reverse the order of the current listing to a Proper Name column reading John ODonnell.

Your help is appreciated.

 

[lynchg]

I don't think you are going to be able to find any algorithm that will handle all types of data entry variations. With your example there is no way to distinguish whether the 'O' is a middle initial or should be concatenated with 'Donnell'. If your data has any of the variations in format described in the other thread, then you are going to get stuck with some oddities.

The only way to be able to program string parsing effectively is to have the data consistent enough to be able to set up the rules and code to those rules. If you find that the only occurrences of O XXX are names like ODonnell and OBrien and there is never a case of an 'O' as a middle initial without a period, then you could possibly come up with code to handle it. But you also have to look for Mc and Mac things like that.

HTH

 

[kentwoodjean]

Thanks for your response. I will do a bit of reformatting.