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Excel - Joining Text in Excel Using Concatenation - Save Time with This Quick Trick! - Episode 412

284 views · Published 29 September 2009 · 2:27 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: MrExcel.com · 2009 · Education

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Microsoft Excel Tutorial:  Joining Text in Excel Using Concatenation - Save Time with This Quick Trick!

Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast! In this video, we're revisiting one of my favorite tips - joining text in Excel. If you have a list of first and last names in separate columns and need to combine them into one, this trick will save you a ton of time. Trust me, I've seen someone try to manually type out 5,000 rows of data and it was not pretty.

The key to joining text in Excel is using something called concatenation. Now, if you're like most people, you probably have never even heard of this term. That's because it's not a commonly used word. But don't worry, I'll show you exactly how to use it. Instead of using the plus sign to add the values in two cells, we use the ampersand symbol (Shift+7). So the formula would be =A2&B2, which will combine the values in those cells into one.

But wait, you might be thinking, "Hey Bill, there needs to be a space between the first and last name." No problem, we can easily add that in by editing the formula to =A2&" "&B2. And just like that, we have our data combined with a space in between. To quickly copy this formula down to the rest of the rows, just double click the fill handle and it will automatically adjust the cell references.

Now, what if you want the text to be in proper case instead of all uppercase or lowercase? Well, Excel has a function for that too - the PROPER function. Simply add it to the formula like this: =PROPER(A2&" "&B2) and it will capitalize the first letter of each word. Keep in mind, this may not work for names that start with "Mc" followed by a "C", so you may need to manually fix those. But for the majority of names, this function will do the job perfectly.

And there you have it, a quick and easy way to join text in Excel using concatenation and the PROPER function. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next year for more netcasts from MrExcel. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more helpful Excel tips and tricks. Happy holidays!

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Table of Contents:
(00:00) Introduction
(00:20) Joining names in Excel
(00:37) Using concatenation
(00:49) Using the ampersand
(01:02) Adding a space between names
(01:12) Copying the formula down
(01:22) Using the PROPER function
(01:50) Watch out for anomalies
(02:00) Other functions for text formatting
(02:10) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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How to join text from two columns using the concatenation character. Episode 412 shows you how to do concatenation, plus how to convert upper case to proper case on the fly.

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