Ever wondered how to go from a bunch of cells with text to one big combined text? Like this:
Well, there is a simple trick, shared by Grant with us in the What is the coolest Excel trick you learned in 2013? post.
Quick and easy way to combine bunch of text values
- Let say the cells you want to combine are in B2:B19.
- In a blank cell, where you want to concatenate all the values type
- =CONCATENATE(TRANSPOSE(B2:B19))
- Don’t press enter yet.
- Select the TRANSPOSE(B2:B19) portion and press F9. (related: debugging formulas using F9 key)
- This replaces the TRANSPOSE(B2:B19) with its result
- Now remove curly brackets { and }
- Enter
- Done!
See this demo to understand.
Bonus tricks
- If you cannot use F9 for any reason, use CTRL+=
- If you want to add a delimiter (like space or comma) after each item in the text, you can use TRANSPOSE(B2:B19 & ” “) or TRANSPOSE(B2:B19 & “,”)
- If the range you want to concatenate is across columns (Say A1:K1), then you can skip the TRANSPOSE formula and write =CONCATENATE(A1:k1), Select A1:K1 and press F9, remove {}s.
Keep in mind
Since F9 replaces formulas with values, if your original data changes, then you must re-write the CONCATENATE(TRANSPOSE(…)) again.
If you would rather keep the formulas alive, then use CONCAT() UDF. It takes a range and a delimiter and spits out combined text with ease.
More on dealing with text using Excel
Here are a few more tips on working with text values in Excel.
- Finding patterns in text
- Extracting a portion of text
- Converting text to sentence case
- Separating user names & domains from email addresses
- Sorting text values using formulas
- Initials from names
- More text processing tips, quick tips.
Thank you Grant
Thanks Grant for sharing this trick with all of us. It is a time saver for sure.
If you like this tip, say thanks to Grant. Also, in the comments, tell us how you combine text values and what other tricks you use.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.