How to Combine Text From Two Cells in Excel

First names in one column, surnames in another, and you need them together. Or you want to build a full address, a product code or a sentence from several cells. Excel gives you three ways to join text, from the quick to the powerful.

Looking to merge cells instead? Merging cells only keeps the top-left value and throws away the rest. To combine the contents of cells, use one of the methods below.

1. The & sign (quickest)

The ampersand joins text together:

=A2&B2

turns Sarah and Jones into SarahJones. To add a space, put one in quotation marks:

=A2&" "&B2

gives Sarah Jones. You can add anything in quotes: commas, dashes, words.

=B2&", "&A2

gives Jones, Sarah.

2. CONCAT

CONCAT does the same as & but in function form, which some people find easier to read:

=CONCAT(A2, " ", B2)

You'll also see the older CONCATENATE function in older spreadsheets. It works the same way and is still supported, but CONCAT (Excel 2019 and Microsoft 365) can also take a whole range like A2:D2.

3. TEXTJOIN (best for lots of cells)

TEXTJOIN lets you set the separator once and can skip empty cells:

=TEXTJOIN(", ", TRUE, A2:E2)

• ", " is the separator placed between each item.
• TRUE means ignore blank cells, so you don't get double commas.
• A2:E2 is the range to join.

This is perfect for addresses where some lines are empty. Available in Excel 2019, 2021 and Microsoft 365.

Keep number and date formats

When you join a number or date with text, Excel loses its formatting. A date becomes a number like 46000, and £1,500.00 becomes 1500.

Wrap the value in TEXT with a format code:

="Total: "&TEXT(B2, "£#,##0.00")
="Due on "&TEXT(C2, "d mmmm yyyy")

gives Total: £1,500.00 and Due on 5 October 2026.

Add a line break

To put each part on its own line, join with CHAR(10), which is a line break:

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

Then turn on Home > Wrap Text for the cell, or the line breaks won't show. On a Mac, use CHAR(13).

No formulas: use Flash Fill

In the column next to your data, type one example of the combined result (e.g. Sarah Jones) and press Ctrl + E. Excel fills in the rest. See our Flash Fill guide.

Turn the formulas into plain text

If you want to delete the original columns, convert the combined column to values first, or it'll turn into #REF! errors:

1. Select the combined cells and press Ctrl + C.
2. Right-click the same cells and choose Paste Options > Values (the clipboard with 123).

Troubleshooting

The result shows the formula, not the text. The cell is formatted as Text. Change it to General, click in the cell, press F2 then Enter.

#NAME? You're missing quotation marks around a space or word, or using TEXTJOIN in an older Excel.

Names run together with no space. Add " " between the cells.

Wrapping up

Use =A2&" "&B2 for quick joins, TEXTJOIN when you're combining lots of cells or some are blank, and wrap numbers and dates in TEXT so they keep their formatting.