Split Full Names into First and Last Name
Turn a single "Full Name" column into clean First and Last columns — without writing a single formula.
Before and after
One column in, two clean columns out — original preserved.
Before
| Full Name | First | Last |
|---|---|---|
| Ada Lovelace | (empty) | (empty) |
| Dr. Grace Hopper | (empty) | (empty) |
| Mary Jane Smith Jr. | (empty) | (empty) |
After
| Full Name | First | Last |
|---|---|---|
| Ada Lovelace | Ada | Lovelace |
| Dr. Grace Hopper | Grace | Hopper |
| Mary Jane Smith Jr. | Mary Jane | Smith Jr. |
Most email tools, CRMs, and customer platforms want first and last name as separate columns. Most spreadsheets store them as one. Splitting the column by hand is tedious; doing it with Excel formulas works until you hit "Mary Jane Smith", "Dr. Ada Lovelace", or "Grace Hopper Jr.", at which point the formula does the wrong thing on every edge case. Clean That Sheet handles the whole column in one pass.
We detect the full-name column automatically (or you can pick it), then split each value into first and last while keeping the rest of the row intact. Middle names go into the first-name column unless the value clearly has a separate middle field. Common prefixes (Dr., Mr., Ms., Mx., Prof.) and suffixes (Jr., Sr., II, III, PhD) are recognized and handled correctly instead of getting stuck in the wrong column.
The original column stays in the file. We add new "First Name" and "Last Name" columns next to it so you can sanity check the result before deleting the original. That way the split is reversible — if something looks off on a row, the source value is still right there.
Once the split looks right in the preview, $1.99 downloads the cleaned file in the same format you uploaded. The split also pairs nicely with our trim-spaces and standardize-column-names tools — first trim the spaces, then split the column, and the result is a file ready to import into any tool that expects separate first/last name fields.
This is the cleanup that turns "a list of names" into "a customer list". Useful for email campaigns, CRM imports, event registrations, recruiting trackers, and any tool that asks for first and last separately and won't accept a single column.