Taking apart a text string (Names)

[msduck283]

I have data being imported from Excel (from many different sources) into a database...due to the way the excel template was originally set up, the name field is all one field...but within the database it needs to be broken down into fields by Title, First Name, Middle I. and Last Name. I'm in need of a calculation that can do this for me. Any help with this would be appreciated.

[mr_vodka]

How is the data seperated? Commas, Return carriage, etc?

[Lee Smith]

Mr Vodka is correct, we really don't have enough here to go on.

Parsing text can be accomplished in several ways, It is always easier for us to assist you, if we can see the actually text/excel file you are talking about.

Lee

[Canucks]

If your name field has spaces inbetween you can do something like what i did to split my ship date and time. Original Shipdate was 1/12/2006 11:45:00 in one field. I know what you going to say is some first name is short some is long how do you split them. Same goes with my date. Notice that Jan is showing single digit. What if it's October? It's gonna get shifted 1 to the right. My calculation goes like this. Left(Shipdate,Position(Shipdate," ",1,1)). This will only give me the date without the time. I am sure if u apply Middle and Right function, you can break them down.

Edited January 11, 2006 by Guest

[msduck283]

Sorry about that...the data in Excel is separated by tabs.

Thanks for any help.

[Lee Smith]

That doesn't help.

As I said before, a sample of the file you are trying to convert would be helpful.

Since a tab separated file is normally a smooth transfer (provided it is setup correctly), it must be something else that is not allowing you to do a smooth transfer?

We can spoon feed you through this, or you can attach a file.

Lee

[mr_vodka]

If its seperated by tabs, can you may be able to import it as a TAB file and when you map the import I believe it would be very simple. Do you have a copy of the excel file you can post?

[msduck283]

Thank you for trying to help me....I was able to do some calculations in Excel to get the information the way I need it.

Again thank all of you.

[RalphL]

Back in FMP 3 days I put together a file to separate names. I just converted it to .fm7 format. It is attached. Look at the about layout for details on the functions used.