Question

I have a column name. There are entries such-as:

Smith, John
Smith, Joe
One whole entry

I need them separated into two columns as this:

LastName        | FirstName
---------------------------
Smith           | John
Smith           | Joe
One whole entry | 

I’m using this query:

SELECT left(name, CHARINDEX(', ', name)) as LastName FROM LookUps

I’ve tried the following above, but it’s displaying the following comma (e.g. Smith,). I need it to remove this following comma, but also display the full information for those entries without a comma.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks..

Answer 1

select 
    case when charindex(',',name) > 0 
            then left(name, charindex(',',name)-1 ) 
            else name end,
    case when charindex(',',name) > 0 
            then ltrim(substring(name, charindex(',',name)+1, len(name) )) 
            else null end   
from yourtable