Excel formula: Join date and text

Generic formula

="text"&TEXT(date,format)

Explanation

To join a date with text, you can use concatenation with the TEXT function to control the date format. In the example shown, the formula in E4 is:

="The date is "&TEXT(B4,"dddd, mmmm yyyy")

How this formula works

The core of this formula is concatenation using the ampersand (&) operator:

="The date is"&date

However, if you simply join a date with text and don't control the date format, the date will revert to it's raw serial number format, and the result will look like this:

"The date is 42887".

To control the date format, use the TEXT function, which is designed to convert a number into text using a specified number format. This article shows a list of codes you can can use for date formats.

Author

Dave Bruns

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