CONCATENATE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
What is CONCATENATE function in Excel?
CONCATENATE function is one of TEXT functions in Microsoft Excel that is used to join two or more text strings into one string.
- =CONCATENATE(“Stream population for “, A2, ” “, A3, ” is “, A4, “/mile.”)
- =CONCATENATE(B2, ” “,C2)
Important: In Excel 2016, Excel Mobile, and Excel Online, this function has been replaced with the CONCAT function. Although the CONCATENATE function is still available for backward compatibility, you should consider using CONCAT from now on. This is because CONCATENATE may not be available in future versions of Excel.
| Argument name | Description |
| text1 (required) | The first item to join. The item can be a text value, number, or cell reference. |
| Text2, … (optional) | Additional text items to join. You can have up to 255 items, up to a total of 8,192 characters. |
Examples
To use these examples in Excel, copy the data in the table below, and paste it in cell A1 of a new worksheet.
| Data | ||
| brook trout | Andreas | Hauser |
| species | Fourth | Pine |
| 32 | ||
| Formula | Description | |
| =CONCATENATE(“Stream population for “, A2, ” “, A3, ” is “, A4, “/mile.”) | Creates a sentence by joining the data in column A with other text. The result is Stream population for brook trout species is 32/mile. | |
| =CONCATENATE(B2, ” “, C2) | Joins three things: the string in cell B2, a space character, and the value in cell C2. The result is Andreas Hauser. | |
| =CONCATENATE(C2, “, “, B2) | Joins three things: the string in cell C2, a string with a comma and a space character, and the value in cell B2. The result is Andreas, Hauser. | |
| =CONCATENATE(B3, ” & “, C3) | Joins three things: the string in cell B3, a string consisting of a space with ampersand and another space, and the value in cell C3. The result is Fourth & Pine. | |
| =B3 & ” & ” & C3 | Joins the same items as the previous example, but by using the ampersand (&) calculation operator instead of the CONCATENATE function. The result is Fourth & Pine. |
Best practices
| Do this | Description |
| Use the ampersand & character instead of the CONCATENATE function. | The ampersand (&) calculation operator lets you join text items without having to use a function.
For example,=A1 & B1 returns the same value as=CONCATENATE(A1,B1). In many cases, using the ampersand operator is quicker and simpler than using CONCATENATE to create strings. |
| Use the TEXT function to combine and format strings. | The TEXT function converts a numeric value to text and combines numbers with text or symbols.
For example, if cell A1 contains the number 23.5, you can use the following formula to format the number as a dollar amount: =TEXT(A1,”$0.00″) Result: $23.50 |
Common Problems
| Problem | Description |
| Quotation marks appear in result string. | Use commas to separate adjoining text items. For example: Excel will display =CONCATENATE(“Hello “”World”) as Hello”World with an extra quote mark because a comma between the text arguments was omitted.
Numbers don’t need to have quotation marks. |
| Words are jumbled together. | Without designated spaces between separate text entries, the text entries will run together. Add extra spaces as part of the CONCATENATE formula. There are two ways to do this:
|
| The #NAME? error appears instead of the expected result. | #NAME? usually means there are quotation marks missing from a Text argument. |