Combine data in excel cell

Combine text from two or more cells into one cell

You can combine data from multiple cells into a single cell using the Ampersand symbol (&) or the CONCAT function.

Combine data with the Ampersand symbol (&)

1. Select the cell where you want to put the combined data.

2. Type = and select the first cell you want to combine.

3. Type & and use quotation marks with a space enclosed.

4. Select the next cell you want to combine and press enter. An example formula might be =A2&» «&B2.

Combine data using the CONCAT function

1. Select the cell where you want to put the combined data.

2. Type =CONCAT(.

3. Select the cell you want to combine first.

   Use commas to separate the cells you are combining and use quotation marks to add spaces, commas, or other text.

4. Close the formula with a parenthesis and press Enter. An example formula might be =CONCAT(A2, » Family»).

Need more help?

See also

TEXTJOIN function

CONCAT function

Merge and unmerge cells

CONCATENATE function

How to avoid broken formulas

Automatically number rows

Watch Video – Combine cells in Excel (using Formulas)

A lot of times, we need to work with text data in Excel. It could be Names, Address, Email ids, or other kinds of text strings. Often, there is a need to combine cells in Excel that contain the text data.

Your data could be in adjacent cells (rows/columns), or it could be far off in the same worksheet or even a different worksheet.

How to Combine Cells in Excel

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to Combine Cells in Excel in different scenarios:

• How to Combine Cells without Space/Separator in Between.
• How to Combine Cells with Space/Separator in Between.
• How to Combine Cells with Line Breaks in Between.
• How to Combine Cells with Text and Numbers.

How to Combine Cells without Space/Separator

This is the easiest and probably the most used way to combine cells in Excel. For example, suppose you have a data set as shown below:

You can easily combine cells in columns A and B to get a string such as A11, A12, and so on..

Here is how you can do this:

• Enter the following formula in a cell where you want the combined string:

  =A2&B2

• Copy-paste this in all the cells.

This will give you something as shown below:

You can also do the same thing using the CONCATENATE function instead of using the ampersand (&). The below formula would give the same result:

=CONCATENATE(A2,B2)

How to Combine Cells with Space/Separator in Between

You can also combine cells and have a specified separator in between. It could be a space character, a comma, or any other separator.

Suppose we have a dataset as shown below:

Here are the steps to combine the first and the last name with a space character in between:

• Enter the following formula in a cell:

  =A2&" "&B2

• Copy-paste this in all the cells.

This would combine the first name and last name with a space character in between.

If you want any other separator (such as comma, or dot), you can use that in the formula.

How to Combine Cells with Line Breaks in Between

Apart from separators, you can also add line breaks while you combine cells in Excel.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:

In the above example, different parts of the address are in different cells (Name, House #, Street, City, and Country).

You can use the CONCATENATE function or the & (ampersand) to combine these cells.

However, just by combining these cells would give you something as shown below:

This is not in a good address format. You can try using the text wrap, but that wouldn’t work either.

What is needed here is to have each element of the address on a separate line in the same cell. You can achieve that by using the CHAR(10) function along with the & sign.

CHAR(10) is a line feed in Windows, which means that it forces anything after it to go to a new line.

Use the below formula to get each cell’s content on a separate line within the same cell:

=A2&CHAR(10)&B2&CHAR(10)&C2&CHAR(10)&D2&CHAR(10)&E2

This formula uses the CHAR(10) function in between each cell reference and inserts a line break after each cell. Once you have the result, apply wrap text in the cells that have the results and you’ll get something as shown below:

How to Combine Cells with Text and Numbers

You can also combine cells that contain different types of data. For example, you can combine cells that contain text and numbers.

Let’s have a look at a simple example first.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:

The above data set has text data in one cell and a number is another cell. You can easily combine these two by using the below formula:

=A2&"-"&B2

Here I have used a dash as the separator.

You can also add some text to it. So you can use the following formula to create a sentence:

=A2&" region has "&B2&" offices"

Here we have used a combination of cell reference and text to construct sentences.

Now let’s take this example forward and see what happens when you try and use numbers with some formatting applied to it.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below, where we have sales values.

Now let’s combine the cells in Column A and B to construct a sentence.

Here the formula I’ll be using:

=A2&" region generated sales of "&B2

Here is how the results look like:

Do you see the problem here? Look closely at the format of the sales value in the result.

You can see that the formatting of the sales value goes away and the result has the plain numeric value. This happens when we combine cells with numbers that have formatting applied to it.

Here is how to fix this. Use the below formula:

=A2&" region generated sales of "&TEXT(B2,"$ ###,0.0")

In the above formula, instead of using B2, we have used the TEXT function. TEXT function makes the number show up in the specified format and as text. In the above case, the format is $ ###,0.0. This format tells Excel to show the number with a dollar sign, a thousand-separator, and one decimal point.

Similarly, you can use the Text function to show in any format allowed in Excel.

Here is another example. There are names and date of birth, and if you try and combine these cells, you get something as shown below:

You can see that Excel completely screws up the date format. The reason is that date and time are stored as numbers in Excel, and when you combine cells that have numbers, as shown above, it shows the number value but doesn’t use the original format.

Here is the formula that will fix this:

=A2&" was born on "&TEXT(B2,"dd mmm yyy")

Again, here we have used the TEXT function and specified the format in which we want the Date of Birth to show up in the result.

Here is how this date format works:

• dd – Shows the day number of the date. (try using ddd and see what happens).
• mmm – shows the three-letter code for a month.
• yyy – shows the year number.

Cool… Isn’t it?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

You May Also Like the Following Excel Tutorials:

• CONCATENATE Excel Range (with and without separator).
• How to Merge Cells in Excel the Right Way.
• How to Combine Multiple Workbooks into One Excel Workbook.
• How to Combine Data from Multiple Workbooks into One Excel Table (using Power Query).
• How to Merge Cells in Excel
• How to Combine Duplicate Rows and Sum the Values in Excel
• Combine Date and Time in Excel

You can combine more data from different into a single cell. There are many ways we can combine data into one cell, for example, «The ampersand symbol» the CONCAT function.

The steps to combine multiple data from different cells into a single cell

1. Open up your workbook.

2. Select the cell you want to put all your data.

3. Type = and select the first cell you wish to combine.

4. Type & and use quotation marks with space enclosed.

5. Select the other cell you want to combine and hit enter. For example =A3&» «&B3.

This works only when you want to combine two cells into one cell.

Steps using the CONCAT function.

1. Open your worksheet.

2. Choose the cell you want to combine the data with.

3. Write the formula =CONCAT(

4. Select the cell you want to combine first.

You use commas to separate the cells you are combining and use quotation marks to add spaces, commas, or other text.

5. Close the formula with a parenthesis and hit enter. An e.g.     might be =concat(A2, «doctors»).

If you have more texts and you want them to fit into one cell, it’s easy. If you put the whole line into one cell, it will keep going, so what you need is a way to organize your work and fit the actual data into one cell. Mostly is done by wrapping text like a paragraph or inserting a line break within the cell.

Steps on how to wrap the text to fit into a cell.

The only thing you have to do is format the text so that the text will wrap automatically.

1. Right, click within the cell.

2. A menu will pop up.

3. Format cells, a dialog box open, move to the alignment tab, and check the box next to the wrap text.

4. The text within the cell will wrap automatically.

Inserting the line break within a cell

The line break will enable you to break every sentence when you want it and how you want them to appear.

1. Type every sentence within the cell.

2. To insert a hard return, press ALT-ENTER. (On a Mac, navigate like CTR-OPTION-ENTER. Or just hit command and enter.

To avoid readability problems, the data in a cell will be aligned at the bottom of the cell Control vertical lines.

3. Select all the cells to align.

4. Right-click and the menu pops up. As it was in the first procedure.

5. Select format cells and then go back to the alignment tab.

6. See the drop-down menu and align all the content within the cell vertically.

Combining CONCATENATE and TRANSPOSE Functions

The CONCATENATE function is a vital tool that allows you to perform various Excel operations, including combining data from different cells into one cell. Therefore, when putting multiple data into one cell, you may also want to transform the layout to fit the cell. This is where the TRANSPOSE function comes in. In this case, the TRANSPOSE function will change the data layout while the CONCATENATE function will combine the data. The syntax for both functions are:

TRANSPOSE(array) and

CONCATENATE(text1, [text2], …)

Steps:

1. Select the cell where you want to store the combined data from multiple cell rows.

2. Write in the following TRANSPOSE formula first:

                          =TRANSPOSE(C4:C7)

The formula indicates that you want to combine data from cells C4 to C7. That means it can change based on the range of cell rows you want to combine into one cell.

3. Press the F9 button and you will see the data in cell D4 within curly braces.

4. You can now remove the curly braces and use the CONCATENATE formula to combine all the selected rows without spaces. The CONCATENATE formula to use is:

                    =CONCATENATE(“text1”,”text2”,”…”),

where

Text1, text2, …represent the data from all cells within the column. This is the dataset you want to combine.

5. Next, you can now make the data from multiple rows clear by inserting a comma (,) and a character (and) between the last two data placed within double quotes (“ ”). The final formula will change to something like this:

                  =CONCATENATE(«text1″,» «,»text2″,» «,»text3″,» and»,»text4″).

Using the TEXTJOIN Function

The TEXTJOIN function allows you to put up to 252 strings of data in one cell. Its syntax is:

TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore_empty, text1, [text2], …), where;

A delimiter is the text separator such as comma, space, and character

ignore-empty uses the TRUE or FALSE result. If the result is TRUE, it will ignore the empty value, while if the result is FALSE, it will include empty values.

Steps:

1.  Select the cell where you want to store the combined data. For example, if you want to combine a cell range like B4:B7, you can select cell C4.

2. Write the TEXTJOIN formula in the selected cell. You can use the following formula:

                           =TEXTJOIN(«,»,TRUE,B4:B7)

3. Alternatively, you can type in the cells one by one, but remember to use a separator (,). In this case, the formula will change to:

                         =TEXTJOIN(«,»,TRUE,B4,B5,B6,B7)

4. Press the Enter button and you will see combined data in the cell.

Using The Formula Bar

When using the Formula Bar to put multiple data in one Excel cell, you will need to copy all the data from the rows and paste them into a notepad. From here, you can now copy the rows again and paste them into your Excel formula bar. That is because the Excel sheet only copies cell by cell.

Steps:

1. Copy all the cell values or data you want to combine and paste them into the Notepad.

2. Copy the values again from the Notepad.

3. Go back to your Excel worksheet and place the cursor in the Formula Bar.

4. Right-click on your mouse to paste the copied rows in the bar and click the Enter button.

5. The step will put all the rows in one cell.

That is all, and your data will be clean and readable. To fit all the data into one cell is annoying when you don’t know how to wrap text or insert a line breaker. Sometimes it is challenging to copy and paste. That will be the next tutorial on copying and pasting the data within a cell that is embedded with hard returns.

If you have a large worksheet in an Excel workbook in which you need to combine text from multiple cells, you can breathe a sigh of relief because you don’t have to retype all that text. You can easily concatenate the text.

Concatenate is simply a fancy way ot saying “to combine” or “to join together” and there is a special CONCATENATE function in Excel to do this. This function allows you to combine text from different cells into one cell. For example, we have a worksheet containing names and contact information. We want to combine the Last Name and First Name columns in each row into the Full Name column.

To begin, select the first cell that will contain the combined, or concatenated, text. Start typing the function into the cell, starting with an equals sign, as follows.

=CONCATENATE(

Now, we enter the arguments for the CONCATENATE function, which tell the function which cells to combine. We want to combine the first two columns, with the First Name (column B) first and then the Last Name (column A). So, our two arguments for the function will be B2 and A2.

There are two ways you can enter the arguments. First, you can type the cell references, separated by commas, after the opening parenthesis and then add a closing parenthesis at the end:

=CONCATENATE(B2,A2)

You can also click on a cell to enter it into the CONCATENATE function. In our example, after typing the name of the function and the opening parenthesis, we click on the B2 cell, type a comma after B2 in the function, click on the A2 cell, and then type the closing parenthesis after A2 in the function.

Press Enter when you’re done adding the cell references to the function.

Notice that there is no space in between the first and last name. That’s because the CONCATENATE function combines exactly what’s in the arguments you give it and nothing more. There is no space after the first name in B2, so no space was added. If you want to add a space, or any other punctuation or details, you must tell the CONCATENATE function to include it.

To add a space between the first and last names, we add a space as another argument to the function, in between the cell references. To do this, we type a space surrounded by double quotes. Make sure the three arguments are separated by commas.

=CONCATENATE(B2," ",A2)

Press Enter.

That’s better. Now, there is a space between the first and last names.

RELATED: How to Automatically Fill Sequential Data into Excel with the Fill Handle

Now, you’re probably thinking you have to type that function in every cell in the column or manually copy it to each cell in the column. Actually, you don’t. We’ve got another neat trick that will help you quickly copy the CONCATENATE function to the other cells in the column (or row). Select the cell in which you just entered the CONCATENATE function. The small square on the lower-right corner of the selected is called the fill handle. The fill handle allows you to quickly copy and paste content to adjacent cells in the same row or column.

Move your cursor over the fill handle until it turns into a black plus sign and then click and drag it down.

The function you just entered is copied down to the rest of the cells in that column, and the cell references are changed to match the row number for each row.

You can also concatenate text from multiple cells using the ampersand (&) operator. For example, you can enter =B2&" "&A2 to get the same result as =CONCATENATE(B2," ",A2) . There’s no real advantage of using one over the other. although using the ampersand operator results in a shorter entry. However, the CONCATENATE function may be more readable, making it easier to understand what’s happening in the cell.

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