How to Convert Full Names to Initials in Google Sheets

0:00 It works just like magic. Enter a name here, Arnold Flavor Bert, and you get the initials in the B column. I'm going to show you how to do this step by step in this really amazing formula combination. So let's start with nothing. We're going to go equals split . We're going to split this name. The delimiter is going to be a space, and that's going to get us each individual name. The next thing we want to do is left. The left is going to get us the very left string , we only want one of that. But notice, once we do that, we only get the very first letter. So let's wrap this with array formula . And you'll see we now get each individual letter, but they're in different spaces. So we're going to wrap this with text join. The delimiter we want is actually nothing, so let's just do two

0:46 quotes with nothing inside. We want to ignore empty space. true. And that's it. We have that comma. Our array formula is in the third argument . We need a parentheses at the end and we get this initials. But watch as I copy and paste this all the way down. We get an error when there's nothing there. So how do we get rid of that error ? We're going to wrap this with another formula combination called if is blank. If is blank. A two. And we're going to have two commas here, because if it's true and it is blank, we want nothing. You could put two quotes there to show nothing, put a parenthesis at the very end, and now copy this all the way down, and our sheet works like magic. We can put a name of someone here, and we get their initials in the B column.

1:36 If you're looking to get more out of your Google Sheets than you ever have before, learn really cool formula combinations like this. Subscribe here to BetterSheets on YouTube.