Forum Discussion

Poogermum's avatar
Poogermum
Brass Contributor
Aug 06, 2020

Joining texts

Hi, 

Hopefully just a quick question. Been looking at the discussions on here to expand my knowledge. I came across the question of joining texts the day and I was just wondering what the advantage of these approaches are in comparison to one another:

 

=CONCATENATE()

=cell1 & cell2

=jointext()

 

I can see that jointext allows you to exclude blanks and to put a delimiter between the joined words and you can make sure that there is no delimiter after the last piece of joined text. So I can see a clear advantage of using this formula. You can also use an array rather than having to add individual cell references. So jointext() is great and I will use it in the future.

 

However, what is the advantage of CONCATENATE() over simply referencing the cells and joining with &???? There might not be one, however, I thought I ask whether i am missing something here...

excel
Formulas and Functions

2 Replies

  • IngeborgHawighorst's avatar
    IngeborgHawighorst
    MVP
    Aug 06, 2020

    Poogermum Just for reference, the function in English Excel is called TextJoin(), not jointext.

     

    Concatenate() offers no advantages over using the ampersand symbol "&". It only exists to provide compatibility with other spreadsheet software. I think it goes back to the days of Lotus 1-2-3. In order to open spreadsheets that were created with Lotus 1-2-3 and were using the Concatenate() function, Excel had to have that function too, so the spreadsheet would not break.

     

    Today, there is no reason whatsoever to use Concatenate(). Using the & sign is always shorter.