From the course: Excel 2016: Advanced Formulas and Functions

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Using ampersands and CONCATENATE to combine data from different cells

Using ampersands and CONCATENATE to combine data from different cells

From the course: Excel 2016: Advanced Formulas and Functions

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Using ampersands and CONCATENATE to combine data from different cells

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- In Excel, there's a function called concatenate. There's also a capability referred to as concatenation. Both of them are a bit tongue twisters, too, aren't they? Let's start with this idea here. We've got names in Column A, first names, then last names, then middle initials for some people, but not always. We'd like to put these together in such a way that we can sort the data, so we'd like to gather the last name, then a comma and a space, then the first name and a space, then the middle initial, and, where necessary, even a period. So, we can do this in a couple of ways. The technique I'm using is often referred to as concatenation, but it doesn't involve the function concatenate as I'm doing it here. =, get the data from cell B2. The ampersand symbol, by the number seven key, means "and," it's as if we're saying, "Let's get the word Baker and," and within double quotes, let's put in a comma and a space, so we want to see B-A-K-E-R, space, and the first name, Mark, and after…

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