what is concatenate in excel

what is concatenate in excel

In Excel, concatenate is a function that allows you to join two or more text strings into one string. The CONCATENATE function is particularly useful when you need to combine text values from different cells into a single cell or when you want to create a custom label or header for your worksheet.

The syntax for the CONCATENATE function is as follows:

=CONCATENATE(text1, [text2], [text3], ...)

Here's a breakdown of each argument:

text1: This is the first text string that you want to join with the other strings.

text2: This is an optional argument that specifies the second text string that you want to join.

text3: This is an optional argument that specifies the third text string that you want to join.

You can include up to 255 text arguments in the CONCATENATE function.

For example, suppose you have a worksheet that contains two columns of data: one column for first names and another column for last names. You can use the CONCATENATE function to combine the first and last names into a single column. The formula for this would be:

=CONCATENATE(A2," ",B2)

This formula combines the text value in cell A2 (the first name) with a space character (" ") and the text value in cell B2 (the last name) to create a full name in the same cell. You can then copy this formula down to the other cells in the column to combine all the first and last names.

Another way to use the CONCATENATE function is to create a custom label or header for your worksheet. For example, you might want to create a label that includes the current date and time, as well as some descriptive text. You can use the following formula to do this:

="Report generated on "&TEXT(NOW(),"dd-mmm-yyyy h:mm AM/PM")

This formula combines the text string "Report generated on " with the current date and time using the NOW function and the TEXT function to format the date and time in the desired way.

In summary, the CONCATENATE function in Excel allows you to join two or more text strings into one string. This function is very useful for combining data from different cells and creating custom labels or headers for your worksheets.

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