The Excel CONCATENATE function joins up to 255 text items into one string. It works in every version of Excel ever shipped — which is exactly why it survives — but it’s officially a compatibility function: it can’t accept ranges, and Microsoft recommends CONCAT or TEXTJOIN for new workbooks. If you maintain older files, here’s everything it does and when to move on.
& operator does the identical job: =A2 & " " & B2.
Syntax
| Argument | Description | |
|---|---|---|
text1 | Required | The first item to join — a single cell, text in quotes, or a number. Not a range. |
text2, ... | Optional | Up to 254 more items, joined left to right. Each one must be a single value. |
Available in: every version of Excel, including the very oldest — that universal reach is its one remaining advantage. It still works fine and isn’t going away, but it’s listed under Compatibility because CONCAT (Excel 2019+) supersedes it.
Join cells with text in between
Build a conference badge from a name and department — the quoted strings supply the space and parentheses:
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Name | Dept | Badge |
| 2 | Sam Reyes | Sales | Sam Reyes (Sales) |
| 3 | Dana Wu | Finance | Dana Wu (Finance) |
| 4 | Omar Hall | IT | Omar Hall (IT) |
The & operator produces the identical result and works everywhere CONCATENATE does — most Excel veterans prefer it for short joins:
Nothing is inserted automatically: skip the " " and Sam Reyes becomes SamReyes(Sales).
Try it: interactive CONCATENATE demo
Type a name (A2) and a department (B2) and watch CONCATENATE and the & operator build the same badge text.
The modern replacements
Three tools now cover everything CONCATENATE did, plus the things it couldn’t:
CONCATENATE’s hard limit shows up fast: joining twenty cells means clicking twenty cells. CONCAT takes the range in one argument, and TEXTJOIN adds the delimiter you were about to type nineteen times.
Numbers and dates join as raw values in all of these — wrap them in TEXT to keep formatting:
Rule of thumb: sharing a file with Excel 2016-or-earlier users? CONCATENATE or &. Everyone on 2019+? Use CONCAT for plain joins and TEXTJOIN whenever a delimiter is involved.
Errors & common pitfalls
#VALUE! or wrong results with a range. =CONCATENATE(A2:A5) does not join the range — legacy Excel returns an error or just the intersecting cell, and Excel 365 spills four separate results. List cells one by one, or switch to CONCAT, which was built for ranges.
#NAME? — misspelled or translated. The name is long and easy to fumble (CONCATINATE is the classic typo). Non-English versions localize it too — VERKETTEN in German, for example — so formulas pasted from forums may need renaming.
Pitfall: forgetting the separators. CONCATENATE inserts nothing between items. Every space, comma, and dash must be a quoted argument: =CONCATENATE(A2, ", ", B2).
Pitfall: dates become serial numbers. =CONCATENATE("Due ", B2) shows Due 46203. Formatting belongs to the cell, not the value — wrap the date in TEXT(B2, "mm/dd/yyyy").
Pitfall: rebuilding it in new workbooks. It still works, but every CONCATENATE you write today is a formula someone will modernize tomorrow. New sheets deserve CONCAT, TEXTJOIN, or &.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Is CONCATENATE deprecated? Will my old formulas break?
What's the difference between CONCATENATE and CONCAT?
=CONCAT(A2:A50)); CONCATENATE forces you to list every cell separately. CONCAT also requires Excel 2019 or newer, while CONCATENATE runs everywhere. Output for the same arguments is identical.Why can't CONCATENATE join a whole range?
CONCATENATE vs the & operator - which should I use?
=CONCATENATE(A2, " ", B2) and =A2 & " " & B2 return the same string in every version. Most people find & faster to type and easier to read; CONCATENATE’s only edge is that a function name can be easier to spot when auditing.How do I join values with a comma between each one?
=CONCATENATE(A2, ", ", B2, ", ", C2). In Excel 2019+ skip the busywork: =TEXTJOIN(", ", TRUE, A2:C2) inserts it everywhere and ignores blanks.Master functions like this in one day
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