Fullname -- First Name Last Name -- comparisons?

Questions
,
1

Hi, new Maker here seeking advice.

I have a Google sheet with one sheet holding a list of contacts with names in a single column called ‘Fullname’. A second sheet has names in two columns called ‘First name’ and ‘Last name’.

When a new record comes in using ‘Fullname’ I want to see if that name exists in the second sheet as a ‘First name’ ‘Last name’ pair. I’m not sure how best to do this.

I could ask an AI agent to interpret if there’s a match. But this is a straightforward process that I don’t want to waste the calls on.

CONTEXT

  • The fullname entries are people making particular posts in Linkedin
  • The firstname lastname pairs are my first degree connections I’ve downloaded
  • My aim is to ensure I take action on the first degree folks first
  • So, if the names match (or are very similar) I’ll light up a checkbox in the google sheet
3

Hello,

Easiest way- add extra column in Sheet2 and use CONCATENATE() formula to merge “First name” and “Last name”.
With this approach you can simply use “Search” module and search for Fullname in this concatenated column.

If you can not add extra column- you can use split() function in Make.

But there is catch.
There are people using two names or two last names for example:

  • John Michael Carter (2 first names, 1 last name)
  • Emily Rose Johnson (2 first names, 1 last name)
  • Anthony Davis Wilson (1 first name, 2 last names)
  • Laura Scott Adams (1 first name, 2 last names)

Split in that case will return array of values based on separator occurrence, for example:

[
    {
        "variable": [
            "Laura",
            "Scott",
            "Adams"
        ]
    }
]

Without extra code/names database it will be hard to choose what is first name and what is last name :slight_smile: Unless your Fullname sheet contains only cleaned values and Last names are always saved using hyphen (for example).

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4

Hi - thanks! The Concatenate in google sheets worked great. =CONCATENATE(A1, " ", B1) to ensure a space between the first and last name.

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