Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Aug 01, 2022

Excel formula

This is embarrassing to ask but I simply can't remember how to do something that I used to do quite frequently with Excel several years ago. I want to enter a person's surname in column A, their Firs...

Excel

Excel on Mac

Formulas and Functions

office 365

JoeUser2004
Aug 01, 2022
Dennis2321

You don't have to use any of the new features of Office 365 Excel. Old functions work just fine. And for this, you do not even need to use an old function (CONCAT). Simply enter the following into D2:

=B2 & " " & C2 & " " & A2

Of course, things get interesting if you want to handle the case where there is no middle name. At a minimum:

=B2 & " " & IF(C2="", "", C2 & " " ) & A2

And then there are all sorts of other special cases to handle.

JoeUser2004

Bronze Contributor

Dennis2321

You don't have to use any of the new features of Office 365 Excel. Old functions work just fine. And for this, you do not even need to use an old function (CONCAT). Simply enter the following into D2:

=B2 & " " & C2 & " " & A2

Of course, things get interesting if you want to handle the case where there is no middle name. At a minimum:

=B2 & " " & IF(C2="", "", C2 & " " ) & A2

And then there are all sorts of other special cases to handle.

Dennis2321

Copper Contributor

Aug 02, 2022

Thank you. I had forgotten about the use of the & sign. I tried looking up files from 10 years ago but couldn't find any where I had previously merged names together. It's amazing what you forget when you don't do something for a long time.
Dennis