Grouping columns
 

I know that this has been answered many times, but I can't find my note. I
have a column of students first names and a column of students last names.
How can I group them with a space into the third column?

Thanks in advance.

Joey

First names in Column A
Last names in Column B

Enter this in Column C, and copy down as needed:

=A1&" "&B1

--
HTH,

RD

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"joey" wrote in message
...
I know that this has been answered many times, but I can't find my note.
I
have a column of students first names and a column of students last names.
How can I group them with a space into the third column?

Thanks in advance.

Joey

I copied the formula you sent into the C1 field but I get no result, only the
formula displaying. Am I doing something wrong?

"joey" wrote:

I know that this has been answered many times, but I can't find my note. I
have a column of students first names and a column of students last names.
How can I group them with a space into the third column?

Thanks in advance.

Joey

Format that cell (whole column????) as General (format|Cells|Number tab)

Then reenter the formula
(select the cell, then F2 followed by Enter should be enough)

joey wrote:

I copied the formula you sent into the C1 field but I get no result, only the
formula displaying. Am I doing something wrong?

"joey" wrote:

I know that this has been answered many times, but I can't find my note. I
have a column of students first names and a column of students last names.
How can I group them with a space into the third column?

Thanks in advance.

Joey

--

Dave Peterson

Try this:

Click in C1, then,
<Ctrl <Shift < ~
Then <F2,
Then <Enter

If it now works, that means that your C1 cell was formatted as Text before
the formula was entered.

What you did to get it right was use a keyboard shortcut to format the cell
as General, then enter Edit mode, then register the formula.

So, make sure your cells are either formatted to General or Number before
you enter the formulas.

Now, if those keystrokes *didn't *work, try this:
<Tools <Options <View tab,
And under "Window Options",
*UNCHECK* "Formulas".
--
HTH,

RD

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please keep all correspondence within the NewsGroup, so all may benefit !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"joey" wrote in message
...
I copied the formula you sent into the C1 field but I get no result, only
the
formula displaying. Am I doing something wrong?

"joey" wrote:

I know that this has been answered many times, but I can't find my note.
I
have a column of students first names and a column of students last
names.
How can I group them with a space into the third column?

Thanks in advance.

Joey

The last suggestion by RagDyer is probably your problem, where
you are formula view. The Ctrl+` (accent grave) toggles between
formulas and nonformulas and is the same as
Tools, Options, View (tab), uncheck/check Formulas
You want it to be unchecked.

If you still have a problem after making sure that the column(s) are
formatted as General and not as Text, the next step would be to
make sure that you did not place a space
before the equal sign. A single quote at the beginning would mess up
a formula as it is a means of indicating a text cell..

The correct terminology is concatenation not grouping
=A1 & " " & B1 first then lastname
=B2 & ", " & A1 lastname comma space firstname

Not the problem you describe but there are similarities, if you used
the fill handle and you see the same results (same name) going down
as opposed to the formulas that you see,
it means that you have calculation turned off (or the wrong formula).
A quick indication of calculation being turned off is if
F2+Enter works. The solution for that would be to turn
Calculation to automatic.
Tools, Options, Calculation (tab), Calculation: turn on automatic
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm