CONCATENATE multiple cells in a column

[Chris108]

I know the short way to concatenate two or three cells, but how can I do a
concatenate job for a column of 500 cells in an easier way instead of keying
in the statement one by one?
-Chris

 

[Harlan Grove]

I know the short way to concatenate two or three cells, but how can I do a
concatenate job for a column of 500 cells in an easier way instead of keying
in the statement one by one?

The only way to do this is using a user-defined function (udf) written
in VBA. [Add-in XLL functions won't handle returning more than 255
chars in Excel 2003 and prior just in case anyone wants to quibble.]

One general udf to do this is shown in the following article in the
archives.

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions/msg/94456a9e326b19a6

You'd need to add the code to a general module. To do that, press the
[Alt]+[F11] key combination to launch the Visual Basic Editor, run the
menu command Insert > Module, then paste the code from the linked
article into that module.

 

[Luke M]

You can't do that.
Excel only lets you concatenate 30 text strings.
At 500 cells, if the formula was possible, you might even run into the
character limit for a single cell.

 

[Bob I]

Excel 2007 Help refers to 255 as a limit

The CONCATENATE function joins up to 255 text strings into one text
string. The joined items can be text, numbers, cell references, or a
combination of those items. For example, if your worksheet contains a
person's first name in cell A1 and the person's last name in cell B1,
you can combine the two values in another cell by using the following
formula:

 

[Chip Pearson]

Are you trying to combine all the text in those 500 cells into a
single cell value?

The CONCATENATE function is rather useless. For a better concatenation
function, use the code at
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/stringconcatenation.aspx

and then call StringConcat from a worksheet cell:

=StringConcat(" ",A1:A100)

Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP
Excel Product Group
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com
(email on web site)