How to join values with the ampersand

Abstract

Often, you’ll need to join together values in Excel.

This is referred to as “concatenation.”

In this example, we have first, middle, and last names shown separately in a table.

I’ll use simple concatenation to join these separate names together into a single name.

The easiest way to concatenate is to use the operator for concatenation: the ampersand character.

For example, I can join Susan and Brown using the formula =B5&D5.

Notice that there is no space separating the names.

I can take the same approach to include the middle initial of the name.

I just need to add two spaces as literal text.

To adapt the formula to handle an optional middle initial, I need to add some conditional logic.

In this case, theIF functionwill work well.

To test for the middle initial, I’m going to use theISBLANK function.

So, to recap, I’m using IF to test for a middle initial.

In this video, we looked at how to concatenate using the ampersand character.

you’ve got the option to also concatenate using the CONCATENATE function.

We’ll look at this option in a separate video.