Hi,
create an update query which splits the two values into there seperate
fields.
You did not give too much information on how the strings look, but you might
find a solution in this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;209045
You will see that you will probably need to use some sort of combinations of
string manipulation functions to retrieve the necessary information.
HTH
Good luck

Hi Curtis,

A crude but fairly effective approach that works for most traditional
American names is:
   
1 Assume that everything up to the first space is the first name.

2 If there are no other spaces, the remainder is the last name.

3 If there are spaces, check for particles such as "de", "de la", "van",
"van der" and so on. If the remainder fits one of these patterns, assume
it's the last name. If it doesn't, move on to the next space and loop
back to 2.

4 Assume that everything between the first space and the beginning of
the last name is the middle name.

To do much better than this means a *lot* of programming. Consider using
a commercial tool such as Splitter For Microsoft Access
http://www.infoplan.com.au/splitter/. This isn't perfect (as I said,
nothing can be) but at least someone else has done the hard work<g>.

The problem is that you can't trust people to have names that fit the
pattern:
    Pierre Joseph Marie Teilhard de Chardin
    Boutros Boutros Ghali
    Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
    J. Edgar Hoover
    Laurens Van Der Post
    Sitting Bull
to name but a few. And there are billions of people in the world (the
majority, as far as I know) whose names don't fit the traditional
American "first middle last" pattern at all: for instance all the places
where the family name is put first and the personal name(s) last.

In addition, there are names that are written identically but parse
differently:
   
    Mary Patrick Henry (daughter of devoutly Catholic
        Mr & Mrs Henry, Patrick is middle name)
    Mary Patrick Henry (family name is "Patrick Henry", let's
        not ask why)

So there's no possibility of writing code that can do this job
perfectly.

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

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