Microsoft releases new iterations of Microsoft Office suite every three years for desktop and Microsoft Office 365 is the subscription based cloud version of their Office software. Earlier in 2016, Microsoft released the 2016 edition of Office and some updates to Office 365 which added new features in Excel. Some very useful functions like the CONCAT and TEXTJOIN functions are added which make concatenating or joining text very easier with multiple cells or strings in your spreadsheet. These functions are only available in the latest Office 2016 desktop installation and Office 365 subscription. To show these new functions, here is the Excel CONCAT and TEXTJOIN function tutorial. I am breaking them into 2 different tutorials for ease of access.

The Excel TEXTJOIN function joins or combines text from multiple cells in your spreadsheet with each string separated by a delimiter. The delimiter can be a comma or space. If the delimiter is empty, the Excel TEXTJOIN function will concatenate the strings like in the previous tutorial. Here is how to use Excel TEXTJOIN function tutorial:

The format of the Excel TEXTJOIN function is:
TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore_empty, text1, text2, … , textN)

Definition

• “delimiter” is the character or string inserted between each string you want to join.
• “ignore_empty” is either TRUE (exclude empty cells or strings) or FALSE (include empty cells or strings).
• “text1” is the first string or cell and “textN” is the nth string or cell which you want to join.

Now here is how we use the Excel TEXTJOIN function:

1. In your Excel spreadsheet, see which cells or strings you want to join using TEXTJOIN.
2. Then select a cell where you want to display the result of the TEXTJOIN function.
3. For example, in this following example spreadsheet, we want to join the strings in cells A2 through D2 and we want to display the output in cell F2.
4. Select the cell F2 and enter the Excel TEXTJOIN function in the formula bar above the spreadsheet:

=TEXTJOIN(“ ”,TRUE,A2,B2,C2,D2)

5. After entering the function, you will see the result in cell F2:


Office Excel – TEXTJOIN function

6. As you can see in the example, the data in cells A2 through D2 is now joined in cell F2 and there are spaces between the strings since we entered space as a delimiter in the function.
7. You can do this with numbers as well, like in the result shown in cell F3:


Office Excel – TEXTJOIN function

8. The result in cell F4 is when TRUE is used:


Office Excel – TEXTJOIN function

9. The result in cell F5 is when FALSE is used and you can see the difference between step 8 and 9:


Office Excel – TEXTJOIN function

10. You can also add strings directly in the function as shown in the following examples:


Office Excel – TEXTJOIN function

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You can view more Office Excel Tutorials in the link too!