How to combine two columns text in Google Sheets?

Use the following formula to concatenate two cells in Google Sheets worksheet columns:

=CONCATENATE(A7,B7)

Or with a separator:

=CONCATENATE(A7," - ",B7)

Concatenate two or more columns in Google Sheets

Step # 1: Prepare your worksheet

Identify two or more columns that you would like to merge in your Google Sheets spreadsheet. In our example, we define two columns that we will concatenate: the course name and difficulty. Note that this is just example and there are tons of use cases in which you will need to join text, the most prevalent is combining month and year values, first and last names, address fields, phone numbers or constructing email addresses to support marketing campaigns.

Step # 2: Combine your columns

Write a formula to join your columns as shown below into cell C3:

=CONCATENATE(A3," - ",B3)

Note that the formula includes the joining of a separator between the values of the two cells.

Then go ahead and drag C3 cell to auto fill the rest of the C column as shown below:

Step #3 – Combine values using the “&” character

An alternative way for you to merge text from the two columns is use the logical AND (&).

The formula is pretty simple:

=A3 & " - " & B3

Step #4: A common error

Note that a typical error is trying to concatenate using the + (plus) sign:

'this returns an error
=A3+"-"+B3

This will render a #VALUE! error. Use the syntax shown in steps 2 or 3 to accomplish the cells merging.