Excel CONCATENATE function is one of the best time saving Excel function. You must have seen people copying the value from one cell and then adding it to next cell one by one but the CONCATENATE formula can do it within seconds. The word concatenate is just another way of saying "to combine" or "to join together". The CONCATENATE function allows you to combine text from different cells into one cell. CONCATENATE function could be used to combine two plain strings or values of cells. To join strings we use & symbol in between of two strings/cell references.

How to Concatenate Text

Example

In our first example we will use plain strings to concatenate. Let's assume we have following two strings, first name and last name.

String 1: John

String 2: Mccallum

Formula: =CONCATENATE("John"&"Mccallum")

Result: If you will copy and paste above formula in an Excel cell, this will return JohnMccallum which is practically incorrect because first name and second name should have space. Let try to concatenating strings with space between two strings:

Formula: =CONCATENATE("John"&" "&"Mccallum")

Now we have perfect output: John Mccallum