How to Combine Text from Multiple Cells in Excel

The video guide shows how to combine the contents of two cells using an ampersand (&) or the CONCATENATE function. The CONCATENATE function is essentially identical to using ampersands but requires more typing and is no longer featured as a text function in recent versions of Excel. If you are just combining a couple of cells, an ampersand is the most efficient method. If you want to add a quotation mark between the content of cells A2 and B2, you would need to write the formula with four consecutive quotation marks as '=A2&""""&B2'.

If you want to combine more than two cells then the use of ampersands quickly becomes inefficient. Instead of a formula reading '=A2&B2&C2&D2', you can instead use the CONCAT function. This lets you select a range of cells to join, so the formula can be rewritten as '=CONCAT(A2:D2)'. The CONCAT function does not let you add any additional text. If you want to add spaces between each of the cells, you can use the TEXTJOIN function. This lets you specify a delimiter such as a space, whether you want to include empty cells, and a range of cells. Assuming you don't want to add an extra space for every empty cell in a range, '=TEXTJOIN(" ",,A2:D2) will join the individual cells together with single spaces in between. Note that achieving this with ampersands would require IF statements to determine if cells are empty before adding spaces e.g. '=A2&IF(B2<>""," "&B2,"")', which is already excessively complicated.

One application of the TEXTJOIN function is in creating search functions in Excel tables. If you join every cell's content in to a single column using a string that will never occur, you can then look for a search string across every column in a table simultaneously. A formula like '=IFERROR(FIND(SearchCell, TEXTJOIN("ZZZ",,A1:J1)),0) is going to look for the contents of the cell named SearchCell in every column from A to J, returning a positive number if the string is found. If you apply a filter to the formula column that filters for numbers greater than 0, you can search your table by typing in SearchCell and re-applying your filter. Although I've kept it simply, you can extend the formula to ensure data is only filtered when a search string is entered.

By Ed Bolton, founder of Excel4Business Ltd. Last reviewed November 2026.