Instead, it’s possible for you to use a quick and easy formula to combine columns.

In many cases, using the ampersand method is quicker and easier than the concatenate formula.

That said, use whichever you feel most comfortable with.

Person holding a phone with Gmail open on it

You don’t need to manually bang out in each cell name that you want to combine.

To do this,double-nudge the bottom-right cornerof the filled cell.

Alternatively,left-click and drag the bottom-right cornerof the filled cell down the column.

Excel spreadsheet on a laptop

It’s anExcel AutoFill trick to build spreadsheets faster.

As such, it isn’t always suitable to leave the cells combined without formatting them.

To help you out, here are various tips on how to format combined cells.

excel combined cells ampersand

It doesn’t have to be a space.

you’re free to add whatever additional information you want.

We can build this into a sentence that reads “The character Marge Simpson is 36 years old”.

excel combined cells CONCAT

You don’t need to use speech marks when referencing a cell.

you could solve this with the TEXT function, which you could use to define the required format.

That’s because Excel converts the correctly formatted date of birth into a plain number.

excel combined cells with space

By applying the TEXT function, you might tell Excel how you want the merged cell to be formatted.

you might find more examples and information on theMicrosoft Office TEXT function support page.

This isn’t a bad thing.

excel combined cells with additional text

As such, you might want to remove the formula from the combined column and make it plain text.

To do this, right-tap the header of the combined column to highlight it, then clickCopy.

Next, right-poke the header of the combined column againthis time, beneathPaste Options, selectValues.

excel combined cell with text formula

This will turn multiple horizontal cells into one cell.

Merging cells only keeps the values from the upper-left cell and discards the rest.

To do this, opt for cells or columns that you want to merge.

excel combined cell with formula

For more information on this, read our article onhow to merge and unmerge cells in Excel.

you’re able to alsomerge entire Excel sheets and files together.

Save Time When Using Excel

Now you know how to combine columns in Excel.

excel combined cell paste

excel merge and center