Joining Text

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Excel journey — lesson 29 of 42.

Formulas aren't just for numbers, they can build text too. The glue is the & operator, which joins pieces of text end to end:

="Hello"&" "&A1

With World in A1, that shows Hello World. Three things to notice: literal text goes in double quotes, cell references go bare, and spaces are never added for you, the " " in the middle is a real piece of the formula. Forget it and you get HelloWorld.

Excel also has a function that does the same job, CONCATENATE (a fancy word for "chain together"). Each piece becomes an argument, separated by commas:

=CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1)
=A1&" "&B1

Those two lines produce exactly the same result, pick whichever you like. You can chain as many pieces as you want, and even mix in numbers: ="Score: "&B2 with 42 in B2 gives Score: 42.

Challenge

Beginner

A first name sits in A2 and a last name in B2.

In C2: the full name, first name, a space, last name
In D2: a greeting that reads Hello, Ada Lovelace!, the text Hello, then the full name, then !

Use & or CONCATENATE, either works. The names change between tests, so build from the cells.

Try it yourself

Sheet1