Here’s a question from Nanda:
“I work as a marketing coordinator. I need to copy list of names available in an Excel spreadsheet into a file i can then import into a legacy information system we use at work. But when I copy the Excel columns to the clipboard and then paste in Notepad, it all goes wrong. Is there a way to simple combine two or more columns in an Excel spreadsheet, and then export the resulting column to a text or csv file?
Sure. Read on for the details.
Merge columns using the concatenation function
Let us use a simple example to showcase the process. You’ll obviously need to apply the steps below to your data.
- Open the Excel spreadsheet that contain the columns you might need to merge as shown below:
- In this example the first name and the last name has to be merged in the Full Name column.
- In the C2 cell type =CONCATENATE (A2, ” ” ,B2).
Here A2 is Vinod and B2 is Mvd. The ” “ represents a space between A2 and B2.
- Now we can see the merged name.
- After this just drag the green bottom pointer to the end of the names.
Concatenate using Excel Auto fill
Using the auto fill functions we can easily merge names into one column. No need of using the formulas. Just by entering the column number we can merge the names in one cell. Read further for the procedure.
- Open your spreadsheet and place the cursor click on the blank space where the names has to be placed.
- Now, click on Home in the ribbon and select the drop down box of Auto Sum in the Editing menu.
- Select more functions, in the select category click All.
- Search for concatenate function and click OK.
- In the text 1 field, select the column by clicking on the icon in the text box.
- Similarly for other text columns and select OK to merge the columns.
That’s it. This is how we can merge names in same column.
Thanks for reading.. 🙂