Know How to Join First and Last Names in Excel

Excel worksheet work as a database, where you might have customer, employee and student names in your data. Most of the time you receive two separate fields stored the First and Last names respectively.

You might need to combine those columns and create a single column for FullName in your report.

In this post, you learn four different methods to concatenate First and Last names in excel.

Use the CONCAT function

You can use the in-built excel CONCAT function to join multiple cell values. To use the CONCAT function, select the cell where you want the combined data to appear. Then, enter the CONCAT function into the cell, followed by the cells that you want to combine.

Please follow the below steps to use the CONCAT function to join both the first and last name columns and create a new column FullName in excel.

1. Go to cell C2
2. Type the formula in cell C2
3. Drag and fill the formula to the cells C2:C6

Use the & operator

You can join two or more cell values using & operator in excel. To use the & operator, you simply type an equal sign = followed by the cell containing the FirstName, an ampersand &, and then the cell containing the LastName.

In this section, you learn how to use the & operator to join the First and Last names in columns A and B.

1. Select cell D2
2. Type the formula =A2&", "&B2 .
3. Drag and fill the formula to the cells D2:D6

Use the CONCATENATE function

You have another excel function CONCATENATE to combine the text in excel. It is exactly like the CONCAT function in excel.

1. Select cell E2
2. Type the formula =CONCATENATE(A2,", ",B2).
3. Drag and fill the formula to the cells E2:E6

Use the TEXTJOIN function

If you are using excel version 2016 or later you have one more function to join the text in excel. This TEXTJOIN function will be very helpful when you have to concatenate a range of cells.

1. Select cell F2
2. Type the formula =TEXTJOIN(",",TRUE,A2:B2).
3. Drag and fill the formula to the cells F2:F6

Conclusions

You learned four different methods to concatenate text in excel. TEXTJOIN function is one of the user-friendly in-built functions available in the excel version 2016 or later. It helps you to concatenate a range/array of cells.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.