How to Combine Text Together in Google Sheets

Have a few text fields in your spreadsheet that you want to combine? Things like "First Name" and "Last Name", or maybe an address with its zip code and city? There are several ways to do this, each one great for specific scenarios. They are:

• Using "Ampersands" &
• Using the =CONCAT() formula
• Using the =CONCATENATE() formula
• Using the =JOIN() formula

Using Ampersands (&)

The Ampersand is the most simple solution. For every string of text you want to combine, use one ampersand. If you are combining first and last names, it'll look like this =A1&" "&B1. If you're combining something with more thna two calls, it'll just have more ampersands, like this: =A1&" "&B1&" "&C1&" "&D1&" "&E1. The downside to using the ampersand is that you need to add another ampersand for every additional cell. This makes it messy once you go past 3 of them.

Using CONCAT()

The =CONCAT() formula is great for just combing two cells together. For instance, =CONCAT(A1, B1). The only downside is that it only accepts two cells at a time. So if you wanted to include a space inbetween the first and last name, you would need to nest the formulas together, like this: =CONCAT(A1,CONCAT(" ",B1)). As you can imagine, this method can get messy very quickly.

Using CONCATENATE()

The expanded version of concat is the =CONCATENATE() formula, which will take in 1 or more cells. So instead of nesting the concat formulas, you just need one formula and the values. By using the concatenate formula, you'll be able to put in a range of cells, like this: =CONCATENATE(A1:C1).

You'll still need to include a space inbetween to separate out the names though. For example: =CONCATENATE(A1, " ", B1). In a sense, this is very similar to the ampersand method - with the only difference being that the concatenate formula will be slightly easier to maintain if you're combining more than 10 cells. However at that point, you might as well use the join formula

Using JOIN()

Another way for combining several fields together is using the =JOIN() formula. This formula only requires you to put in a delimiter just once, making it rather easy to read and maintain.

=JOIN(" ", A1:B1)

The only downside to using this method is if you need to use different delimiters (e.g. a space and a hypen and a comma). However, the best way to approach something like that would be to combine the different methods. Let's say we want to combine first name, last name, house number, street name, city, state, and zip code. We want it to look like this: "John Doe 123 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217" -- and our spreadsheet row looks like this:

If we were to do this with ampersands, it would look like this:

=A2&" "&B2&" "&C2&" "&D2&", "&E2&", "&F2&" "&G2

If we were to do it by combining a few methods, it would looke like this:

=JOIN(" ",A2:C2,JOIN(", ",D2:F2),G2)

The benefit of the join formula increases with the number of cells you need to combine together. No matter which method you use, you'll get basically the same result so it's really up to the situation or which one you prefer using.

Common Use Cases

• Creating a "Full Name" out of multiple fields
• Creating a unique identifier by combining two or more fields
• Generating a list of email addresses using a specific rule (e.g. first.last@company.com)