Textjoin is one of the features that make Microsoft Excel one of the best spreadsheet apps. This feature enables you to combine texts from various cells into a single list within a cell. It is a prevalent method for combining texts in different cells in Excel.
Learning to use Textjoin in Excel is essential to understand how it works because even though it is more effective for joining cell contents, it can be confusing if you don’t learn to use it properly.
This article will introduce you to Textjoin in Excel, its syntax, and examples illustrating how to use it. Let’s get going!
Excel Versions that Support Textjoin
Textjoin is a new Microsoft Excel feature, and it is not available for all Excel versions. It is only available in Excel for Office 365, Excel 2021, and Excel 2019.
Therefore, confirm your Excel or Office version if you cannot find this feature within your worksheet. You can use the Excel online version here if you discover your app version is incompatible.
Textjoin Syntax
Below is the Textjoin syntax format:
=TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore_empty, text1, [text2], …)The syntax must begin with the equality sign, followed by the word TEXTJOIN, then the arguments with brackets.
The arguments contain a minimum of three entries: delimiter, ignore_empty, and text1. All these three arguments are required, but there are other optional arguments you can add. Here is a breakdown of how the arguments work:
- Delimiter: delimiter is a required argument that functions as a separator between each text value you want to combine. It can be a comma or any other symbol that will separate each cell's content from the other in the resulting cell.
- Ignore_empty: This argument is used to ignore certain cells. It can take two values, TRUE or FALSE. TRUE will ignore any blank cell in the worksheet, while FALSE will do otherwise.
- Text1: This is the first value you want to link. You can type the texts or input the cell reference containing the texts.
- Text2: This is an optional argument you will need if there are additional texts to link.
What You Should Know Before Using Excel
There are certain things to help you understand how Excel works. You can see these tips as conditions for using this feature. Here they are:
- Textjoin is not available for all Excel or Office versions but in Excel for Office 365, Excel 2021, and Excel 2019.
- Textjoin will convert any number you supply for delimiter or text argument to text.
- It will link cell contents without any delimiter if you don’t specify a delimiter within the syntax.
- The maximum number of arguments the function can take is 252.
- The resulting string cannot have more than 32,767 characters, the Excel cell limit.
Examples of How To Use Textjoin
Below are examples that illustrate how to use Textjoin in Excel.
Combine Texts Separating Each Cell Content With a Comma
Formula: =TEXTJOIN(", ", TRUE, A2:D2)
The formula above combines the texts in cells A2 to D2 in cell E2, separating each text in a cell with the delimiter comma “,”. It will ignore empty cells since the formula has TRUE in the ignore_empty syntax. Change TRUE to FALSE if you want empty cells to reflect in the combined cell.
Combine Texts and Date with Textjoin
The default Textjoin Syntax will not work if you need to combine text with dates. You will get the results as shown below instead.
However, you can fix this by converting the text to a string before combining them.
Here the formula TEXT(B2, "mm/dd/yyyy") was inserted within the Textjoin formula to convert the dates in column B to strings.
Combine Cell Content with Multiple Delimiters
You can combine cell contents with multiple delimiters using Textjoin by enclosing all delimiters in curly braces.
In this illustration, the delimiters I used are comma (,) and space ( ) as seen below and in the strings below:
=TEXTJOIN({", "," "}, TRUE, A2:C2 )
Merge Text with Line Breaks
You can merge cell contents such that each cell value will begin in a new line using the CHAR(10) as the delimiter.
In this case, the formula will become:
=TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10), TRUE, A2:C2 )
Finally, select the cell containing the combined text and click on the Wrap Text function at the top area of the worksheet.
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