Excel is a sophisticated spreadsheet program with hundreds of built-in capabilities for manipulating and organizing data.
The basic function may be handy for a variety of reasons, particularly if you have a data sheet with people’s first and last names in distinct columns.
If you’re dealing with a list of names for work or pleasure, you may want to know how to merge names in Excel, and we’ll teach you how in a few simple steps.
How to Combine Names in Excel?
Here is how to combine names in Excel:
- Open the spreadsheet containing the names
- Click on a new cell where you want to place the combined names
- Use the concatenate function to join the names
- Double-click the bottom right square to auto-fill the results
The concatenate function in Excel is the easiest technique to connect two data cells together.
Concatenate is a verb that meaning to connect objects in a chain or series, and it’s a built-in function in Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet applications.
Begin by opening the spreadsheet containing the data you wish to utilize. Find and choose a cell in a blank column where the merged names should go.
For our example, see the picture below.
We start by clicking on cell D2, and entering the following function:
=CONCATENATE(C2," ",B2)The concatenate function connects cells. You may utilize pre-existing data or input your own like we’ve done above. We’ll utilize the First Name in cell C2 after the first parenthesis and terminate it with a comma.
Next, we’ll type ” “ to insert a space after the first name. Without it, the end product would resemble JoeSmith.
Finally, we’ll wrap things off using the data in B2. Close the parentheses and hit the enter key.
The end product is a readily legible first and last name. To auto-fill the remaining names, double-click on the little square on the bottom right of the cell. The concatenate function is useful for much more than simply names!
