Summary

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")

Generic formula

="text"&TEXT(date,format)

Explanation 

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.

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Dave Bruns

Hi - I'm Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.