How to add string to string in excel

VBA Concatenate Text Strings Together (& – Ampersand)

In this Article

We have already gone over an introduction to string functions in our VBA Strings and Substrings Functions tutorial. We are now going to look at how to concatenate text strings.

Concatenate Strings

You can use the & operator in VBA to join text strings.

Concatenate Cells

You can also concatenate cells together. Below, we have the text strings in A1 and B1:

The following code shows you how to join text strings from cell A1 and B1 using the & operator, in cell C1:

Concatenate Variables

This is the full procedure to concatenate two cells together using string variables.

Using the & Operator with Spaces

When you want to include spaces you use & in conjunction with ” “. The following code shows you how you would include spaces:

Using the & Operator to Concatenate a Quotation Mark

Let’s say your text string contains a quotation mark, the following code shows you how to include a quotation mark within a text string:

Putting Strings on a New line

Let’s say you have five text strings, you can put each text string on a new line or paragraph, using either the vbNewLine, vbCrLf, vbCr or Chr Function. The following code shows you how to put each text string on a new line:

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Strings in VBA

For a selection of other String function available in other languages but adapted for VBA, visit the additional string functions page with , StartsWith and EndsWith, Contains, PadLeft and PadRight, IsNullOrEmpty and more.

What is a String

The variable type is used to hold strings of text. Strings are a sequence of characters: alphabetical, numbers, special characters in any combination.

It is good programming practice to declare a variable and its type before using it because it prevents mistakes (see Option Explicit):

To give the variable a value the value has to be surrounded with double quotes:

Note
The Visual Basic interpreter tries to understand (resolve) any assignment of a variable given its type. The following would also be automatically converted to the string type: str = 100

Concatenation

Concatenation means the joining of multiple strings into a single string. You can do this with the & (most commonly used) or + (alternative) symbol.

. returns value for str1: abc_1230/08/2022

Note that VBA is not particular about the variable types you want to append, it will automatically convert the provided type to string in the process.

String Manipulation

There are many VBA’s built-in string functions that alter a string. Some of them we’ll study here: Trim, LCase and UCase, Space, Replace and StrReverse

LCase(String): Returns the lower case of the specified string

Ucase(String): Returns the upper case of the specified string

When you have to compare two variable values it can be important to check if all values are in the same case for the cases that it is not important if a value is written with capital or not. Then you use Lcase or Ucase before the values.

Spaces — add or remove

Space(number) — fills a string with a specified number of spaces. Used in combination with/ concatenated with other variables via the ‘&’-symbol. Note that more often you will simply create a string containing the required number of spaces.

Other functions concerning spaces remove spaces. As variable-values with or without erroneous spaces differ it is important to check if there are any spaces in values.

LTrim(String)	Returns a string after removing the spaces on the left side of the specified string.
RTrim(String)	Returns a string after removing the spaces on the right side of the specified string.
Trim(String)	Returns a string value after removing both leading and trailing blank spaces.

Replace

Syntax: Replace( string_to_search, string_to_replace, replace_with [start, [count, [compare]]] )

The arguments between the [] are optional. Start: This is the position in string_to_search to begin the search. If this parameter is omitted, the Replace function will begin the search at position 1.
Count: This is the number of occurrences to replace. If this parameter is omitted, the REPLACE function will replace all occurrences of string_to_replace with replace_with.
Compare: This can be one of the following 2 values:vbBinary, the Compare Binary comparison or vbTextCompare, Textual comparison.

StrReverse(«abc»). Reverses the specified string: cba

Substring functions

Substring functions return only a certain part of the original string. VBA has a neat collection of such procedures discussed below.

Left & Right

The functions Left and Right return the first or last number of characters:

Mid(string_to_search, start_position, number_of_characters)
For extracting a substring, starting at the start_position somewhere in the middle of a string. If you want to extract a substring from a string starting in the middle until the end of it you can omit the third argument.

Length or Position

The Len(String) returns the length, the number of characters, of the string, including the blank spaces.

A common use of Len is to check if the string is empty or not, and let that determine what to do:

Search

InStr( [start], string_to_search, substring, [compare] ) ‘Returns the first occurence of the specified substring. Search happens from left to right.

On the first place you can give the startposition of the search, if omitted the search starts at the beginning. On the second place comes the text to search, and on the 3th place what you want to find. VBA will then give you an Integer back in return. This number is 0 if the string is not found. If the string is found then you get the location of the start of the string you were search for.

InStrRev(string1,string2[,start,[compare]])

InStrRev(» «codevbatool», «o») result:10
Returns the first occurence of the specified substring. Search happens from Right to Left. You get the place of the first occurence from the right of the string, but counted from the left. it checks its position from the forward direction and gives its position as the result.

The practical use of InStrRev can be in finding the last index of a character inside a string.

Summary

Function Name	Description
InStr	Returns the first occurence of the specified substring. Search happens from left to right.
InstrRev	Returns the first occurence of the specified substring. Search happens from Right to Left.
Lcase	Returns the lower case of the specified string.
Ucase	Returns the Upper case of the specified string.
Left	Returns a specific number of characters from the left side of the string.
Right	Returns a specific number of characters from the Right side of the string.
Mid	Returns a specific number of characters from a string based on the specified parameters.
Ltrim	Returns a string after removing the spaces on the left side of the specified string.
Rtrim	Returns a string after removing the spaces on the right side of the specified string.
Trim	Returns a string value after removing both leading and trailing blank spaces.
Len	Returns the lenght of the given string.
Replace	Returns a string after replacing a string with another string.
Space	Fills a string with the specified number of spaces.
StrComp	Returns an integer value after comparing the two specified strings.
String	Returns a String with a specified character the specified number of times.
StrReverse	Returns a String after reversing the sequence of the characters of the given string.

Below image shows the Code VBA add-in support for VBA String procedures.

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Inserting into an Excel VBA string

In JAVA or C++, we can do something along the line of myString.insert(position, word) . Is there a way we can do the same in Excel VBA’s string? In my worksheet, I have a string looks like this: 01 / 01 / 995 , I wants to insert a 1 into the year, so make it 01 / 01 / 1995 .

Is there another easier / more elegant way to do it?

3 Answers 3

I dont think there is a cleaner way of doing it so you could just wrap it up in a function. Another way of doing it would be with replace , but it’s not any cleaner.

or just modify what you have

This a version of the accepted answer, with added tests and working the way I would expect it to work:

Here is my fifty cents for this question.

First of all, I need to give credit to WONG, Ming Fung from wmfexel where I found this trick.

Unlike the VBA Replace function who asks for the String to replace, the Replace Worksheet function only asks for the position in the Origin String and the number of characters to overwrite.

By «abusing» this overwrite parameter, setting it to 0 allows us to add a given string at a specific position in an Orignin string by replacing 0 characters of it.

Here it how it works :

As you can see, it’s really convenient and readable. For those who are picky and thinks the name Replace is just confusing, Wrap it in an Insert function and you’ll be all done ;).

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How can I concatenate strings in VBA?

This question comes from a comment under Range.Formula= in VBA throws a strange error.

I wrote that program by trial-and-error so I naturally tried + to concatenate strings.

But is & more correct than + for concatenating strings?

3 Answers 3

& is always evaluated in a string context, while + may not concatenate if one of the operands is no string:

This is simply a subtle source of potential bugs and therefore should be avoided. & always means «string concatenation», even if its arguments are non-strings:

The main (very interesting) difference for me is that:
«string» & Null -> «string»
while
«string» + Null -> Null

But that’s probably more useful in database apps like Access.

There is the concatenate function. For example But the & operator always concatenates strings. + often will work, but if there is a number in one of the cells, it won’t work as expected.

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VBA Concatenate Strings with Ampersand Operator

The VBA Tutorials Blog

Introduction — VBA Concatenate Strings

In VBA, you concatenate strings into a single string using the & , or ampersand, operator. “Concatenate” is just a fancy way of saying “combine” or “join.” This isn’t just a VBA thing. The word “concatenate” is used in almost all programming languages. When you concatenate strings, you are joining them together into one string.

How you concatenate strings varies by programming language, but in VBA you simply add an ampersand between your strings to combine them into one string.

Just like most other VBA tasks, there are many different ways to combine VBA strings, but the & operator is the best way. If you’re familiar with my VBA tutorials, you no doubt have seen me use “&” to concatenate strings. This article will be the first time I’ve actually explained what the ampersand operator is and why concatenation is so valuable to understand.

For more tips and tricks for handling strings, check out my Working with Strings series.

Example — VBA Concatenate Strings

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Tutorial — VBA Concatenate Strings

How to concatenate strings with VBA

In this example, the strings str1 and str2 are concatenated (or combined) into one string, strCombined . There’s no practical limit to how many strings you can combine together using & s. I mean, there is probably a limit but it’s not a practical one. Chances are you’ll be limited by the maximum number of characters in a string before you’re limited by how many ampersands you can have.

Take a look at this example to see what I mean:

In this example, multiple &s are used to join the strings into the combined string «180629» .

You’re not limited to using ampersands to concatenate string variables, either. You can actually use them to combine literal strings or strings and numbers. Check out this example, which combines a string and a number:

When you run this macro, you’ll be greeted with msgbox containing your combined string:

How to concatenate quotation marks with VBA

Concatenating quotation marks in VBA can be tricky since your strings are often surrounded by quotation marks. To combine strings that include quotation marks, you need to surround one or two quotation marks with a pair of quotation marks.

I know, it’s really confusing! Instead of trying to make sense of it with words, let’s look at an example.

The phrase mooo is now surrounded by quotation marks.

Okay, so it’s three consecutive quotation marks to display a quotation mark around typed strings. But what if you want a stand alone quotation mark around a variable? In that case, it’s four consecutive quotation marks to concatenate a quotation mark around a variable.

Makes perfect sense, right? I’m kidding. I know it’s tough, but it’s just one of those little things you have to memorize if you want to show quotation marks in your concatenated strings.

Common VBA Concatenate Errors

Notice in all my examples there’s a space between the variable and the & operator. This is extremely important because the ampersand has more than one meaning in VBA.

When a variable is immediately followed by an ampersand (with no space), it tells VBA you are trying to declare the variable as a Long data type. This is a very old feature of VBA that still exists for backward compatibility.

Let’s go up to my first example and try to remove the space between str1 and & . Your line of code will turn red and you’ll get an error, like this:

This is by far the biggest mistake I see when people are trying to concatenate strings. You must have a space before and after your ampersand to concatenate strings!

Another mistake I see people make is trying to combine strings with the + symbol. While it technically works when you have all strings, it won’t work the way you want it to when you trying combining strings and numbers. Case in point:

Notice how val2 isn’t a string because it’s not surrounded by quotes. When you try to combine the values using the plus symbol instead of the ampersand, VBA immediately interprets both values as numbers and adds them together. You’ll get a result of 30. If you used the ampersand to properly concatenate, you’d get the string 255.

The bottom line is you should ALWAYS use the & operator to concatenate VBA strings.

Application Ideas

One of the most practical uses for string concatenation is when you’re looping through all the rows in a range in Excel. You’ll often combine a column letter with an iterating row number to loop through different rows in a column. You’ve probably been concatenating without even realizing it!

Notice how I’m concatenating the string «A» with the integer i . This combines the variables in such a way that it checks all the values in cells A1, A2, …, A100. This is where the value of concatenation becomes evident. Concatenating strings and numbers to represent cells is the key component of automating Excel.

Almost every VBA article I write has some element of string concatenation. Take a look and see if you can spot them!

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