This Content Covers:
- Using the ‘&’ (ampersand) Operator
- Using the CONCAT Function
- Using the CONCATENATE Function
- Using TEXTJOIN Function
- Using Excel Flash Fill Feature
How to combine names (first name and last name) in Excel? /How do you combine first and last name in excel? /How to merge first name and last name in excel? /Adding first name with last name in excel.
Excel is a most important application for analyzing data. It helps in analyzing numeric and text data. Often you need to deal with the text data like names, departments, regions, country, product list and categories etc. Excel will help you to analyze such text data and find the desired outcomes.
Name is mostly used items in excel to combine the first and last part of any names. Often You will find that the first name and last name are in different columns of excel file. In this tutorial you will be able to deal with this problem and get the name combined in one cell.
To combine the first and last name we will use the following examples as a base of this tutorial. I will share with you the five different methods to combine the first and last name in excel.
We will combine the first name (column B) and last name (column C) in column E as mentioned as full name.
1 Using the ‘&’ (ampersand) Operator:
The “&” operator is a concatenation operator. We will merge the first name and last name by using the “&” operator in the given formula.
We have taken the first name from cell B3 and last name from cell C3 and joined them by using “&”. You can also just put the formula like =B3&C3, but it will combine the first name and last name without any space character. To keep the space between the first and last name you need to put a space character between two double inverted commas.
- Using the CONCAT Function
The CONCAT function combines a range or list of texts. Below is the example of combining first and last names by CONCAT Function.
Our target result in cell E3 derives from the cell B3 and C3. If we do not enter the space character enclosed in double quotes, it will appear like AndreaAlexander in cell E3. That is why we need to put a space character in double quotes for the results to turn like below.
- Using the CONCATENATE Function
The CONCATENATE function combines several text strings in to one string. Now Microsoft intends to CONCAT to replace CONCATENATE, may by its for the length of the function name. Moreover CONCATENATE joints the list only where CONCAT joints the text list and ranges. Let us explain the usage in our below example.
The usage of the function is similar to the CONCAT. We will change the name of function from CONCAT to CONCATENATE and will get the same result.
You will the similar result. You will find no different outcome from what we have in the CONCAT.
- Using TEXTJOIN Function
The TEXTJOIN is a function that joints a list or range of text strings using a delimiter. A delimiter is used to make the word separated. It could be a space character, comma, slash etc. The TEXTJOIN function works as like as CONCAT but it allows the delimiter as an argument. See the below example.
First argument here is a delimiter. The space character is enclosed in double quotes as want keep the first name and the last name separated by a space character. “TRUE” (or “1”) is a confirmation to ignore empty cells. B3 (First name and C3 (Last name) are the texts that we want to combine and following are the results:
- Using Excel Flash Fill Feature
Flash fill is a very fantastic feature in excel. It does not require any formula. Excel will automatically fill data if it can detects a pattern in a manually inputted data. In the E3 cell, full name is typed manually and press the enter button from the keyboard.
After pressing the enter from the keyboard, the selection automatically shifts to the next cell. In our below example it is in cell D4. So start typing the first name in cell D4, the excel will automatically identify a pattern from cell D3 and suggest for flash fill as circled in the example.
If you press enter, the excel will fill the rest all the cells in D column as the same pattern in D3. In our below example by using the flash fill feature excel has combined the first and last name.
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