Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Combining Cell Contents.

Combining Cell Contents

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 9, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013


3

At the heart of Excel is the ability to add formulas to worksheets. You use these formulas to manipulate information stored in different cells. One of the ways you can manipulate information is to combine the contents of your cells. For instance, let's assume you have a list of last names in column A, a list of first names in column B, and a list of titles (Mr., Ms., Dr., etc.) in column C. If you wanted to derive a full name for these people, you could use the following formula:

=CONCATENATE(C4, " ", B4, " ", A4)

The result of such a formula is that Excel combines the values (the names and titles) from the specified cells and places spaces between them.

If I am remembering my spreadsheet history correctly, the CONCATENATE function was originally included in Excel for compatability with other spreadsheet programs—most notably Lotus 123. Personally, I prefer to use what I've always viewed as the native concatenation operator for Excel, which is the ampersand. Here's how you could write the same concatenation formula mentioned above:

=C4 & " " & B4 & " " & A4

The ampersand character (&) is used to indicate that Excel should "add" text together to create a new text value.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9635) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Combining Cell Contents.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Special Differences when Searching

Word includes two different search engines. Which search engine you choose to use will dictate what Word shows as ...

Discover More

Adjusting Times for Time Zones

Collect a series of times in a worksheet, and you might need to adjust those times for various time zones. This involves ...

Discover More

Multiple Footers on a Page

Trying to figure out how you want Word to handle footers in your document can be a challenge, primarily because Word ...

Discover More

Program Successfully in Excel! This guide will provide you with all the information you need to automate any task in Excel and save time and effort. Learn how to extend Excel's functionality with VBA to create solutions not possible with the standard features. Includes latest information for Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365. Check out Mastering Excel VBA Programming today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Relative References to Cells in Other Workbooks

When you construct a formula and click on a cell in a different workbook, an absolute reference to that cell is placed in ...

Discover More

Filling References to Another Workbook

When you create references to cells in other workbooks, Excel, by default, makes the references absolute. This makes it ...

Discover More

Moving the House Number to Its Own Cell

Excel is great at manipulating data, but sometimes it is difficult to figure out the best way to do the manipulation. ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is nine minus 1?

2022-01-15 19:43:06

John Mann

Just for interest sake the CONCATENATE funtion isn't listed in my version of Lotus 1-2-3 (release N9.8.0208.1200 Copyright 1991, 2002 - the last release).

The & for concatenating cell contents works, with minor syntax differences from Excel 2010.


2020-05-09 10:33:11

Ron Pineo

There is also the handy concat(A4:z4) function that can concatenate a range. Allows you to make very large strings that wouldn't normally fit in a cell.


2020-05-09 08:06:26

Alex B

If you have Office 2019, or Microsoft 365 you could use
=textjoin(" ",TRUE,C4,B4,A4)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.