I just tried doing this, as you suggested, and it DOES work, but it's a bit
peculiar. If the formula's sitting in a text-formatted cell and I reformat
to general, it doesn't change, but if I F2 edit the formula, and back up past
the = sign and then hit backspace, it will change (like I'm deleting what's
not there). Kind of seems like they're stuffing in an invisible ' symbol,
like they used to use for text left-justification. But in the old days, the
' left, " right, and ^ center used to be visible symbols if you looked at the
formula line, and they aren't visible here anymore.

I can't completely test this right now, since I'll have to wait until it
happens to me involuntarily again. But I think you've likely pegged it for
me. It surprises me, though, that I fixed it originally by pasting in text,
seems like that would have been more likely to be formatted as text rather
than general. So strange.

Anyway, thanks for your help! Much appreciated!

"Gary''s Student" wrote:

There are two potential reasons:

1. the cell has been accidentally formatted as Text. Reformat to General,
touch F2, touch ENTER

2. There may be a non-printing character before the = sign
--
Gary''s Student - gsnu200755


"lireland" wrote:

I used to routinely use the concatenate formula in excel, with either syntax:
=CONCATENATE(A1,B1,C1) -OR-
=A1&B1&C1

Lately, sporadically, it just doesn't work, leaves my cell sitting with a
literal that looks like the formula rather than showing the concatenated
value. I don't have the Tool/Options/View Formula option checked, nor have I
used the Ctl-` command to turn this on or off. The only way I seem to be
able to get around this is by copying a concatenated formula option out of
help and pasting it, and then editing it to suit my situation, the Insert
Function does not work, either. I HAVE checked my formulas VERY CAREFULLY
for misplaced spaces or commas, etc., and I can't find any typos. Any
suggestions?