Create email with display name

Some applications show email addresses together with a "display name", where the name appears first, followed by the email address enclosed in angle brackets (<>). The goal in this example is to create a format like this based on an existing name and email address.

In the worksheet shown, column B contains a name, and column C contains an email address. The formula in column D uses the ampersand character (&) to join the name and email address together:

=B5&" <"&C5&">"

This is an example of concatenation. On the right side of the formula, the email address in C5 is wrapped in angle brackets:

" <"&C5&">"

Notice the angle brackets are text and must be enclosed on double quotes (""). Also notice that opening bracket (<) begins with a space character. This allows us to join the name directly to the left side:

=B5&" <"&C5&">"

The result is the name followed by a space character, followed by the email address in angle brackets.

Concatenation functions

In the example shown, the ampersand operator (&) is used to concatenate the name, email, and angle brackets manually. The ampersand is a flexible way to concatenate text strings, because it can be used in a formula anywhere. However, Excel also has three functions dedicated to concatenation: CONCATENATE, CONCAT, and TEXTJOIN. Both CONCATENATE and CONCAT can be used to solve the same problem like this:

=CONCATENATE(B5," <",C5,">")
=CONCAT(B5," <",C5,">")

Note that the CONCATENATE function is now technically replaced by the CONCAT function, which was first released in Excel 2019. The TEXTJOIN function is primarily designed to concatenate ranges.