It comes down to whether all files have the same formatting. Meaning, if the names are always proceeded by the word "Name", then you could find the name of the person following this word in every text file relatively easily. Or if the names always appear in the same location of the file...
You can use almost any language to extract the names.
Another option, if you have SQL server enterprise edition, then you can use the data mining in the SSiS package to extract the names. I haven't worked wih it, but read up on it some. It may still need some type of location or key to reliable extract the names from the text files. However, you could then store the names into a comma delimited file and import it into excel quite easily at that point. I would still try the SSIS package even if you don't have enterprise edition and see what you can pull from the file using expressions.
Otherwise, i suppose you could write something that would reject all common words (the, and, or, have, is, etc), dump the result into another file or table, and whittle away at the remaining words until you get most of the names out of it. Separate the names by commas and import into excel.
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