Jul 15, 2015 - Method 1. Press CTRL to select multiple cells to be concatenated. Select a cell where you want to enter the formula. Type =CONCATENATE( in that cell or in the formula bar. Press and hold Ctrl and click on each cell you want to concatenate. The DATE function applies to Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2011 for Mac, Excel 2010, Excel 2007, Excel 2003, Excel XP, and Excel 2000. And day are in separate cells. To concatenate the parts of a date into one cell. In the sample worksheet below. Cells A2, B2, and C2 contain the year, month, and day. We hope this tutorial on how to.
We continue to make improvements with Excel, and its native functions. CONCAT This new function is like CONCATENATE, but better. First of all, it's shorter and easier to type. But it also supports range references, in addition to cell references.
Learn more about IFS Tired of typing complicated, nested IF functions? The IFS function is the solution. With this function, conditions are tested in the order that you specify. If passed, the result is returned. You can also specify an else 'catch all' if none of the conditions are met. Learn more about SWITCH This function evaluates an expression against a list of values in order, and returns the first matching result.
If no results match, the 'else' is returned. Learn more about TEXTJOIN This function combines text from multiple ranges, and each item is separated by a delimiter that you specify.
Learn more about New charts.
In this tutorial, you will learn various ways to concatenate text strings, cells, ranges, columns and rows in Excel using the CONCATENATE function and '&' operator. In your Excel workbooks, the data is not always structured according to your needs.
Often you may want to split the content of one cell into individual cells, or do the opposite - combine data from two or more columns into a single column. Common examples that require concatenation in Excel are joining names and address parts, combining text with a formula-driven value, displaying dates and times in the desired format, to name a few. In this tutorial, we are going to explore various techniques of Excel string concatenation so that you can choose the method best suited for your worksheets. What is 'concatenate' in Excel?
In essence, there are two ways to combine data in Excel spreadsheets:. Merge cells. Concatenate cells' values When you merge cells, you 'physically' merge two or more cells into a single cell. As a result, you have one larger cell that is displayed across multiple rows and/or columns in your worksheet. When you concatenate cells in Excel, you combine only the contents of those cells.
In other words, concatenation in Excel is the process of joining two or more values together. This method is often used to combine a few pieces of text that reside in different cells (technically, these are called text strings or simply strings) or insert a formula-calculated value in the middle of some text. The following screenshot demonstrates the difference between these two methods: Merging cells in Excel is the subject of our next article, and in this tutorial we will tackle two essential ways to concatenate strings in Excel - by using the CONCATENATE function and the Excel & operator. Excel CONCATENATE function The CONCATENATE function in Excel is designed to join different pieces of text together or combine values from several cells into one cell. The syntax of Excel CONCATENATE is as follows. In Excel 2016, Excel 2019, Excel Online and Excel Mobile, CONCATENATE is replaced with the CONCAT function, which has exactly the same syntax. Although the CONCATENATE function is kept for backward compatibility, it is recommended to use CONCAT instead because Microsoft does not give any promises that CONCATENATE will be available in future versions of Excel.
Concatenating the values of several cells The simplest CONCATENATE formula to combine the values of cells A1 and B1 is as follows: =CONCATENATE(A1, B1) Please note that the values will be knit together without any delimiter, as in row 2 in the screenshot below. To separate the values with a space, enter ' ' in the second argument, as in row 3 in the screenshot below. =CONCATENATE(A1, ' ', B1) To separate the concatenated values with other delimiters such as a comma, space or slash, please see.
Concatenating a text string and cell value There is no reason for the Excel CONCATENATE function to be limited to only joining cells' values. You can also use it to concatenate various text strings to make the result more meaningful. For example: =CONCATENATE(A1, ' ', B1, ' completed') The above formula informs the user that a certain project is completed, as in row 2 in the screenshot below. Please notice that we add a space before the word ' completed' to separate the concatenated text strings. Naturally, you can add a text string in the beginning or in the middle of your Concatenate formula as well: =CONCATENATE('See ', A1, ' ', B1) A space (' ') is added in between the combined values, so that the result displays as 'Project 1' rather than 'Project1'. Concatenating a text string and a formula-calculated value To make the result returned by some formula more understandable for your users, you can concatenate it with a text string that explains what the value actually is. For example, you can use the following formula to return the current date: =CONCATENATE('Today is ',TEXT(TODAY, 'dd-mmm-yy')) Using CONCATENATE in Excel - things to remember To ensure that your CONCATENATE formulas always deliver the correct results, remember the following simple rules:.
Excel CONCATENATE function requires at least one 'text' argument to work. In a single CONCATENATE formula, you can concatenate up to 255 strings, a total of 8,192 characters.
The result of the CONCATENATE function is always a text string, even when all of the source values are numbers. Excel CONCATENATE does not recognize arrays.
Each cell reference must be listed separately. For example, you should write =CONCATENATE(A1, A2, A3) instead of =CONCATENATE(A1:A3).
If at least one of the CONCATENATE function's arguments is invalid, the formula returns a #VALUE! '&' operator to concatenate strings in Excel In Microsoft Excel, & operator is another way to concatenate cells. This method come in very handy in many scenarios because typing the ampersand sign (&) is much quicker than typing the word 'concatenate':) Similarly to the CONCATENATE function, you can use '&' in Excel to combine different text strings, cell values and results returned by other functions. Excel '&' formula examples To see the concatenation operator in action, let's re-write the CONCATENATE formulas discussed above: Concatenate the values in A1 and B1: =A1&B1 Concatenate the values in A1 and B1 separated with a space: =A1&' '&B1 Concatenate the values in A1, B1 and a text string: =A1 & B1 & ' completed' Concatenate a string and the result of the TEXT / TODAY function: ='Today is ' & TEXT(TODAY, 'dd-mmm-yy') As demonstrated in the screenshot below, the CONCATENATE function and '&' operator return identical results: Excel '&' operator vs.
CONCATENATE function Many users wonder which is a more efficient way to concatenate strings in Excel - CONCATENATE function or '&' operator. The only essential difference between CONCATENATE and '&' operator is the 255 strings limit of the Excel CONCATENATE function and no such limitations when using the ampersand. Other than that, there is no difference between these two concatenation methods, nor is there any speed difference between the CONCATENATE and '&' formulas. And since 255 is a really big number and in real-life tasks someone will hardly ever need to combine that many strings, the difference boils down to the comfort and ease of use.
Some users find CONCATENATE formulas easier to read, I personally prefer using the '&' method. So, simply stick to the concatenation technique that you feel more comfortable with.
Concatenate cells with a space, comma and other characters In your worksheets, you may often need to join values in a way that includes commas, spaces, various punctuation marks or other characters such as a hyphen or slash. To do this, simply include the character you want in your concatenation formula.
Remember to enclose that character in quotation marks, as demonstrated in the following examples. Concatenating two cells with a space: =CONCATENATE(A1, ' ', B1) or =A1 & ' ' & B1 Concatenating two cells with a comma: =CONCATENATE(A1, ', ', B1) or =A1 & ', ' & B1 Concatenating two cells with a hyphen: =CONCATENATE(A1, '-', B1) or =A1 & '-' & B1 The following screenshot demonstrates how the results may look like: Concatenate text strings with line breaks Most often, you would separate the concatenated text strings with punctuation marks and spaces, as shown in the previous example. In some cases, however, may need to separate the values with a line break, or carriage return. A common example is merging mailing addresses from data in separate columns. A problem is that you cannot simply type a line break in the formula like a usual character, and therefore a special CHAR function is needed to supply the corresponding ASCII code to the concatenation formula:.
On Windows, use CHAR(10) where 10 is the ASCII code for Line feed. On the Mac system, use CHAR(13) where 13 is the ASCII code for Carriage return. In this example, we have the address pieces in columns A through F, and we are putting them together in column G by using the concatenation operator '&'.
The merged values are separated with a comma (', '), space (' ') and a line break CHAR(10): =A2 & ' ' & B2 & CHAR(10) & C2 & CHAR(10) & D2 & ', ' & E2 & ' ' & F2. When using line breaks to separate the concatenated values, you must have the ' Wrap text' option enabled for the result to display correctly. To do this, press Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog, switch to the Alignment tab and check the Wrap text box. In the same manner, you can separate concatenated strings with other characters such as:. Double quotes (') - CHAR(34). Forward slash (/) - CHAR(47).
Asterisk (.) - CHAR (42). The full list of ASCII codes is available Though, an easier way to include printable characters in the concatenation formula is to simply type them in double quotes as we did in the. Either way, all four of the below formulas yield identical results: =A1 & CHAR(47) & B1 =A1 & '/' & B1 =CONCATENATE(A1, CHAR(47), B1) =CONCATENATE(A1, '/', B1) How to concatenate columns in Excel In order to concatenate two or more columns in Excel, you just enter a usual concatenation formula in the first cell, and then copy it down to other cells by dragging the fill handle (the small square that appears in the lower right hand corner of the selected cell). For example, to concatenate two columns (column A and B) separating the values with a space, you enter the following formula in cell C2, and then copy it down to other cells. When you are dragging the fill handle to copy the formula, the mouse pointer changes to a cross, as shown in the screenshot below. A quick way to copy the formula down to other cells in the column is to select the cell with the formula and double-click the fill handle.
Please note that Microsoft Excel determines how far to copy cells after the fill handle double click based on the cells referred to by your formula. If there happen to be empty cells in your table, say cell A6 and B6 were blank in this example, the formula would be copied up to row 5 only. In this case, you would need to drag the fill handle down manually to concatenate the entire columns. An alternative way to concatenate columns in Excel is to use the corresponding option of the. How to concatenate a range of cells in Excel Combining values from multiple cells might take some effort because the Excel CONCATENATE function does not accept arrays and requires a single cell reference in each argument. To concatenate several cells, say A1 to A4, you need either of the following formulas: =CONCATENATE(A1, A2, A3, A4) or =A1 & A2 & A3 & A4 When joining a fairly small range, it's no big deal to enter all the references in the formula bar. A large range would be tedious to add, typing each cell reference manually.
Below you will find 3 methods of quick range concatenation in Excel. Press CTRL to select multiple cells to be concatenated To quickly select several cells, you can press the CTRL key and click on each cell you want to include in the CONCATENATE formula. Here are the detailed steps:. Select a cell where you want to enter the formula. Type =CONCATENATE( in that cell or in the formula bar. Press and hold Ctrl and click on each cell you want to concatenate. Release the Ctrl button, type the closing parenthesis in the formula bar and press Enter.
When using this method you must click each individual cell. Selecting a range with the mouse would add an array to the formula, which the CONCATENATE function does not accept. Use the TRANSPOSE function to get the range When you need to concatenate a huge range consisting of tens or hundreds of cells, the previous method is not fast enough because it requires clicking on each cell.
In this case, a better way is to use the TRANSPOSE function to return an array, and then replace it with individual cell references in one fell swoop. Select the cell where you want to output the concatenated range. Enter the in that cell, =TRANSPOSE(A1:A10) in this example. In the formula bar, press F9 to replace the formula with calculated values. Delete the curly braces that turn a usual Excel formula into an. As a result, you will have all the cells references to be included in your concatenation formula. Type =CONCATENATE( in front of the cell references in the formula bar, type the closing parenthesis and press Enter.
Whichever method you use, the concatenated value in C1 is a text string (notice its left-alignment in the cell), although each of the original values is a number. This is because the CONCATENATE function always returns a text string regardless of the source data type. Use the Merge Cells add-in A quick and formula-free way to concatenate any range in Excel is to use the Merge Cells add-in for Excel with the ' Merge all areas in selection' option turned off, as demonstrated in. Concatenate numbers and dates in various formats When you concatenate a text string with a number or date, you may want to format the result differently depending on your dataset.
To do this, embed the TEXT function in your Excel concatenate formula. The TEXT(value, formattext) function has two arguments:.
In the first argument ( value), you supply a number or date to be converted to text, or a reference to the cell containing a numeric value. In the second argument ( formattext), you enter the desired format using the that the TEXT function can understand. We have already discussed one such formula in the beginning of this tutorial that. I will remind you that when combining a text string and date, you have to use the TEXT function to display the date in the desired format.
For example: =CONCATENATE('Today is ', TEXT(TODAY, 'mm/dd/yy')) or ='Today is ' & TEXT(TODAY, 'mm/dd/yy') A few more formula examples that concatenate a text value and number follow below: =A2 & ' ' & TEXT(B2, '$#,#0.00') - display the number with 2 decimal places and the $ sign. =A2 & ' ' & TEXT(B2, '0.#') - does not display extra zeros and the $ sign. =A2 & ' ' & TEXT(B2, '#?/???' ) - display the number as a fraction. How to split cells (opposite of CONCATENATE in Excel) If you are looking for the opposite of CONCATENATE in Excel, i.e. You want to split one cell into several cells, a few options are available to you:. Text to Columns feature.
Flash Fill option in Excel 2013 and 2016. Formulas (MID, RIGHT, LEFT functions) You can find the detailed steps illustrated with formula examples and screenshots in the tutorial. Merge Cells add-in - formula-free way to concatenate cells in Excel With the, you can efficiently do both:. Merge several cells into one without losing data.
Concatenate the values of several cells into a single cell and separate them with any delimiter of your choosing. The Merge Cells tool works with all Excel versions from 2003 to 2016 and can combine all data types including text strings, numbers, dates and special symbols. Its two key advantages are simplicity and speed - any concatenation is done in a couple of clicks. And now, let me show it to you in action. Combine the values of several cells into one cell To combine the contents of several cells, you select the range to concatenate and configure the following settings:. Cells into one under ' What to merge';. Select the delimiter you want under ' Separate values with', it's a comma and a space in this example;.
Choose where you want to place the result, and most importantly. Uncheck the ' Merge all areas in the selection' option. It is this option that determines whether the cells are merged or the cells' values are concatenated.
Combine columns row-by-row To concatenate two or more columns, you configure the Merge Cells' settings in a similar way, but choose Columns under ' What to merge': Join rows column-by-column To combine data in each individual row, column-by-column, you choose to merge Rows, select the delimiter you want (line break in this example), configure other settings the way you want and hit the Merge button. The result may look similar to this: To check how the Merge Cells add-in will cope with your data sets, you are welcome to.
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If someone wants to examine the formulas discussed in this tutorial more closely, the is available for download. Thank you for reading! See also. Hi Thank you for the detailed examples. I've a bit complicated query though, may be because I'm new to this. So, I need to fill Youtube URLs in one column and the Embed codes in another. Is it possible that I can just fill in the URL and the embed code generates by any formula?
Column 1: Column 2: Column 2 has the Embed code which has the Video ID after 'embed/' that appears at the end after the '/' in Column 1. It is same for all the videos and I've to maintain a sheet of Thousands of them! So far I've been copying and pasting both from the YouTube videos but would love to know if it's possible to merge the partial text(ID) from column 1 in the middle of the text in Column 2. Thanks in advance!
Regards, Abhinav. Hi Abhinav, All comments containing external links are subject to manual validation, that's why they did not get posted immediately (the only one working anti-spam technique we could think of:) As for the formula, the 'iframe.' String is the same for all rows except for the ID from column 1, right? If so, you can split it into 2 parts, and put the parts into 2 separate cells. For example: Cell F1: And then, you can use the RIGHT function to extract the ID (from A2 in this example), and concatenate the 3 parts like this: =F1&RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND('/',A2, FIND('/', A2, FIND('/',A2)+1) +2))&F2. Hi Aland, I have an excel table (C4:O12) that sums values W-L-T (win-loss-tie) records both horizontally and vertically when entering a 'W', 'L', or 'T' in each cell in table with a resulting '0-0-0' format.
I have the totals with this format in bottom row from C13:O13 as well as in column from P4:P12 Here are the following formulas Ive used: horizontal =CONCATENATE(COUNTIF(C4:O4,'W'),'-',COUNTIF(C4:O4,'L'),'-',COUNTIF(C4:O4,'T')) vertical =CONCATENATE(COUNTIF(C4:C12,'W'),'-',COUNTIF(C4:C12,'L'),'-',COUNTIF(C4:C12,'T')) How do I sum the totals for either column O, or row 13 to get an overall total in the same '0-0-0' format? I have 2 columns Singer 1 and singer 2. I want to concatenate with comma separator. However in some rows only Singer 1 Values are available and if there is no value in singer 2 - I dun want the comma separator to be posted since there is a single value. For better understanding: Scenario 1 - Singer 1 - Jolly Singer 2 - Nerdsk Result of concatenation - Jolly, Nerdsk Scenario 2 Singer 1 - Jolly Singer 2 - Result of Concatenation - Jolly, The result I m looking for is - Jolly without a comma Hope this explains what I am trying to convey. Do let me know a solution that I can implement.
Thank You In Advance Rgds Ankur. Here is one i am trying to do. I have a pricing matrix and i have named each cell in the matrix by its location within the matrix, example. A1=ABa1, B1=ABa2, C1=ABa3 A2=ABb1, B2=ABb2, C2=ABb3 A3=ABc1, B3=ABc2, C3=ABc3 so on another sheet i have my products that are coded with these name.
Product A: S1234a1 Product B: S4567b4 i want to strip that 'a1' off the end and then use it in the formula to show the price for ABa1. I use 'RIGHT' formula to grab the 'a1' text, and then i use CONCATENATE with plain AB text to create the value ABa1 displayed in the cell. So thats great i can see a string on data that is exactly what i want so heres my dilemma.
In any cell, if i manually type in '=ABa1', it refers to the cell which i named ABa1 and the value within that cell is displayed. Makes sense works perfect. But what i want to do is use my CONCATENTATED string of data, rather that actually keying in the my '=ABa1'. Somehow like this.=(the concatenated data string i want use), and then will have the same affect as when i manually key it in. I have a large data that are over 13K rows, I want to combine all of them into one cell.
I know you can only have 8192 characters in an Microsoft Excel cell. I want to know if anyone know how to create a VBA macro or better way to have a formula that can do the job. Right now each cell has 9 characters in each cell so I am combining about 3200 cell at once, but I have to do this over and over again until i finish all my 13K records. I need to separate them by comma (,). For example: 123456789 That is how I want it but I know I could only do 3200 records at a time.
My original records looks like this: 123456789. Hello Sir/Madam, plz solve my problem that how to write many dates in a cell in excel sheet since a have a range of dates for example here Mr. Ram has taken 6 spells leave in a month as SN NAME DAYS FROM DATE TO DATE 1.
Mr.Ram 5 2 3 2 2 1 blank 2. Mr.Paul 1 3 2 1 3. Mr.Mac 3 3 4. Mr.Bond 7 sir/madam, i want to write all DAYS in a cell like above and all FROM DATE in a cell like above and also TO DATE in a cell like above. Sir i want that if there is only two spells of leave of an employee there shows only two lines in cell and if there is three spells of leave of an employee then there shows only three lines in cell AND if there is only on day of leave then shows in only from date cell and to date will blank as shown in 6th spell as 1 day.
Please HELP ME SIR/MADAM. Is there a quick way to build a formula: =concatenate(a1,a2,a3,a4. A1024) or =concatenate(a1,b1,c1,d1. Amj1) without typing the addresses one by one? Please note, that the cells a1.a1024, or a1.amj1, contain results of other formulas, so their content varies, and the TRANSPOSE trick seems not to work:-( BTW, most of the above internal results will be just empty strings, and the rest will be just one or two letters, so the actual result of the above concatenate will be only 100-200 characters.