[AccessD] Splitting up names

Hmm, there are a few things you might be able to pick out reliably like
common prefixes and suffixes (Jr.), but the bulk will probably be best
handled with a splitting fields on the spaces with manual cross checking.
Data like the following make it impossible to tell which field that middle
name belongs in.

MARY ELLEN SMITH
JOHN VAN HORN

Debbie

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark [mailto:John.Clark at niagaracounty.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 1:22 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Splitting up names


If got a user running a db in Access. She has a list of names and they
were all input into a single "name" field, rather than "last name" &
"first name." She would now like to split these names up, but there are
some double first names, as well as "jr" and "sr" suffixes. 

Is there a way to do this?

Basically names might be like this:

JOHN SMITH JR
MARY ELLEN SMITH
BARBARA SMITH

And I'd need to get them like this into a first name field like:

JOHN
MARY ELLEN
BARBARA

and a last name field like:

SMITH JR
SMITH
SMITH

John W. Clark
Computer Programmer
Niagara County
Central Data Processing

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