How to merge data from two different columns in Excel

This is a quick video I used to answer a question about how to merge data in two columns of an Excel spreadsheet. This solution uses the CONCATENATE() function in Excel to "merge" data from two columns into a third column.

You can also find written instructions about the Concatenate function from Microsoft's help center here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/concatenate-HP005209020.aspx

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Closed Caption:

hey Denise it smell I saw your post and
I saw the comments and Jason Tucker and
Lauren Mason gave to your post about
you're asking about truncating or
emerging two columns and then they gave
the concatenate function I think you're
absolutely right i think Anthony is does
mean merge in the sense that what you're
giving here so you're saying that you
need emerges cells and all right only
the empty cells so one thought I have is
here is kind of let's say you have two
rows and that's it goes on to you know
to the thousands or whatever and you got
this empty cell in here but the
concatenate function allows you to be
able to do is you're actually going to
be creating a third column it and that's
the one that you're going to merge both
those cells into and then later on you
can get rid of these two guys
the way you would do that actually have
a random number generators in here let
me turn those into values here for a
second
hold on okay good
so now just turn them into values so
they don't change anyway so the
concatenate function if you just put an
equals concatenate and then the open /
ends and you pick the first column to
sell in the first column put a comma and
then you pick the column cell in the
second column and then you put the
clothes / ends what that will do is in
that third cell it will actually merge
both those two values for you then all
you would have to do is drag on down and
you merge them all basically so you can
see ABCD in 6043 one goes to a b c d 60
431
now if you need to put any spaces or
hyphens or some some kind of a separator
in the middle there
what you can do is very concatenate this
is kind of one was pointing out to
concatenate then choose that first
column for a , and then maybe put a this
little quote and there may be a - and a
quote and then a another , so basically
you're creating that would be a second
position and then your third and then
that last little cell you pick that
other item and then you close it out
hit the enter key and as you can see
what it did is that that ABCD in the
middle - that we put in and then 60 431
ABCD 604 31 but that'll - in the middle
and if you just drag that all down that
then basically reachable do floppy for
your little third column
so in what you'll see here is like in
this particular one we have the blank
cell that mnop will essentially over
right that last one that the that empty
cell but you're doing all in all in this
third column
here's the deal because this is a
formula what you'll need to do then is
after you do all that copy all of that
guy
so then you copy that and then you paste
it back into itself as a value so that
way
as you can see right now I've got these
things highlighted there is a formula
value in there or a formula in there
what you need to do is click ok so now
you turn these into hard values and so
when you get rid of these two columns
it won't affect that third column
because those are otherwise would have
been dependent on these first two
columns hope that makes sense
so notice if i delete those now all
right that third column stays where as
this one which was still dependent on
the formulas now go away because the
reference columns have gone away
anyway hope that makes sense i think
that's the merge function that you're
looking for it's called concatenate to
care