Concatenate date cells with text cells in Excel

by Mary Ann Richardson | Dec 12, 2006 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Microsoft Office, Mary Ann Richardson, cell, H12, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office Suite Excel Tips Newsletter

Takeaway: Mary Ann Richardson explains that when concatenating date and text cell data in an Excel formula, you need to convert date cells to text to avoid unexpected results.

When concatenating—using a formula to combine data and/or text from one or more cells into one cell—date cells with text cells in an Excel formula, you must first convert the referenced date cells to text; otherwise, you end up with an unexpected result. For example, suppose cell H11 contained the text Due Date: and cell H12 contained a formula that calculated the date. H12 is correctly formatted for the date data type, m/d/yyyy. If you use the formula =H11&H12 to concatenate these cells, the result comes back with the serial date (such as, Due Date: 39054).

Because Excel ignores the formatting of H12, Excel returns the serial date unless the contents of H12 are converted to text before concatenating, as shown in the following formula:

=H11&TEXT(H12," mmmm d, yyyy")

The correct result of this formula is Due Date: December 3, 2006.

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Print/View all Posts Comments on this article

Sorting date columns PeterSS | 12/13/06

Another way basil.cinnamon | 12/13/06

Good idea... Level | 12/13/06

RE: Concatenate date cells with text cells in Excel p.vidal@... | 02/22/08