Tip #97 - Excel – Concatenating Cells

100 Computer Tips in 100 Days

Tip #97 - Excel - Concatenating Cells

When managing list data in Excel it’s often necessary to combine the contents of one or more fields. The Concatenate function will accomplish this task for you.

Concatenate is a function in the Text category.

Imagine that you have a list that contains the first name and the last name of individuals.  Of course you want to separate this information into individual fields for sorting purposes but you might want to have them combined for exporting to a mail merge or for name tags. In this example we’ll take the last name, add a space and a comma and then insert the first name.

First you’ll want to insert a new column or use the last column in your list to combine the names. Next click the Insert Function button on the formula bar. From the Text category choose Concatenate and click OK.

In the Function Arguments dialog box enter the cell address for the first Last Name in your list. In the Text2 box enter a comma and a space (to separate our last name from the first name) and in the Text3 box enter the cell address for the First Name. Check the Calculation Result area to make sure it looks the way you want it to and then click OK. 

All you have to do now is fill it in down all the cells and of course you’ll do that by clicking on the cell that has the formula, moving your mouse to the lower right corner of that cell where the little fill handle is and double clicking the fill handle. Bam! The formula is copied down in all of the cells.

Now you can throw the word Concatenate into conversations and people will think you are a genius.

Happy Computing!

Diane

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