You can use the following formula in Excel to extract the last name from a full name in a cell:
=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("*",SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","*",LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","")))))
This particular formula extracts the last name from a full name in cell A2.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Related: How to Extract First Name from Full Name in Excel
Example: Extract Last Name from Full Name in Excel
Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the number of sales by various employees at some company:
We can use the following formula to extract the last name from each employee:
=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("*",SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","*",LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ","")))))
We can type this formula into cell C2, then drag and fill it down to the remaining cells in column C:
Column C now contains the last name of each employee in column A.
Notice that the formula works even if the full name does or does not contain a middle name.
Note: This formula works by replacing the last space in the name with an asterisk ( * ) and then uses the FIND function to locate the asterisk and extract a certain number of characters in the name from the right.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:
How to Count Frequency of Text in Excel
How to Check if Cell Contains Text from List in Excel
How to Calculate Average If Cell Contains Text in Excel
