35. Excel Tips - Get Initials from a Name

Nick's picture


Suppose you have a list of Names, and you only want the initials of the people.

There's an easy way to do this in Excel

Here's our data:
initials-from-name-excel

The formula we use is:
=LEFT(B3)&MID(B3,FIND(" ",B3)+1,1)

Download Example Sheet to practise getting initials from a list of name

Video Training: Get Initials from Name

AttachmentSize
initials-from-name-excel.xls18 KB

Very nice. And for 3 initials?

This is the tidiest solution I've seen to this problem. How easily can it be extended to three initials?

E.g., Hans Christian Anderson --> HCA

Nick's picture

=LEFT(B3)&MID(B3,FIND("

=LEFT(B3)&MID(B3,FIND(" ",B3)+1,1)&MID(RIGHT(B3,LEN(B3)-FIND(" ",B3,1)),FIND(" ",RIGHT(B3,LEN(B3)-FIND(" ",B3,1)))+1,1)

Nick