Extracting a word from text in an excel field

[john 25454]

How do I extract the last word from variable length text in an excel field?

eg Extract the family name from a full name: "Smith" from "John Edward Smith"
or "Jones" from "Albert Jones"

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

If it is always delimited by a space

=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-SEARCH("^^",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"
","^^",LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")))))


Beware if you have names like Loudon Wainwright III

those have to be handled manually

 

[Amit Shanker]

Use Data--Text to Columns feature in Excel.

Amit