Contact first name in first name field

[alullo]

Our organization is undertaking a data cleansing effort.  Several of our contacts have the first and last name in the last name field.  We would like to make sure that all contact records have the first name in the first name field.  Does anyone have an idea on how this can be done? 

[Mark Silber]

You could export your contacts to Excel using data loader (make sure you include the Contact ID field), clean the data and then re-import it. Using Excel, you could either manually fix the data or create an Excel formula to pull the first name out of the last name field. I don't have any examples, but this is a straightforward Excel function.

[Jakester]

To build on Mark's approach, this Excel formula will identify whether a name has a space:

=IF(NOT(ISERROR(FIND(" ",A1))),"Has Space","No Space")

 And then you can filter out the space-having names and use the Data-Text to Columns... feature in Excel to split them out into first and last name.