This tutorial will demonstrate how to concatenate a date with another string of text in Excel and Google Sheets.

Join Date with Text

If you attempt to concatenate (join) a date with text, the date will be displayed as a number:

<<update example   = b3 & b4    where b3 says “The date is: ”  and b4 is a date. show that the date formatting is not carried over>>

This is because Excel stores dates as serial numbers; when you join a date with text, the cell formatting is not carried over.

TEXT Function

The TEXT Function allows you to display a number as text with specified formatting.  You can use the TEXT Function to set date formatting.  Here’s an example with m/d/yyyy formatting:

Here is an example with MMMM D, YYYY formatting:

Create Date Range

You can join together two dates to create a date range using two text functions:

 

Notice that this maintains the date formatting.

By adding in IF Statements you can create a smarter formula that won’t display blank dates:

or

Concatenate Date in Google Sheets

All of the above examples work exactly the same in Google Sheets as in Excel.