CONCATENATE
Cutting Up & Piecing Together Text Strings
Basic Description
The Excel CONCATENATE function joins together a series of supplied text strings or other values, into one combined text string.
The format of the function is :
where the text arguments are a set of one or more text strings or other values that you want to join together.
In Excel 2007 and later versions of Excel, you can supply up to 255 text arguments to the Concatenate function, but in Excel 2003, the Concatenate function can only accept up to 30 text arguments.
Concatenate Function Examples
The following spreadsheets show the Concatenate function, used to join together the strings in columns A - C of the example spreadsheet.
Note that, in the examples above, text strings have been added to separate the different fields. For example, in cell D2, a space (encased in quotes) has been used to separate the forename and surname.
Also note that in cell D3, the Text function has been used to convert the date value in cell C3 into a string, using the date format "dd/mm/yy". If the date was not converted in this way, the date part of the returned string would be displayed as the date's underlying value, which is the number 31810. This is explained further in the 'Trouble Shooting' section below.
Further information and examples of the Excel Concatenate function can be found on the Microsoft Office website.
Trouble Shooting
Some users encounter the following problem when using the Concatenate function:
The Concatenate function inserts a number in place of a date or time, as shown below:
Dates and times within Excel are represented by numbers, and it is simply the formatting of a cell that causes these numbers to be displayed as dates and times. Therefore, when an Excel date or time is supplied to the Concatenate function the underlying numeric value is shown, instead of the formatted date or time (read more about Excel data types on the Excel Formatting page)
This problem can be solved by using the Excel Text function to convert the date or time value into a text string. This is shown in the example spreadsheet below: