Concatenate Date in Excel & Google Sheets

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:

=TEXT(B3,"M/D/YYYY")

Here is an example with MMMM D, YYYY formatting:

=TEXT(B3,"mmmm d, yyyy")

Create Date Range

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

=TEXT(B3, "m/d/yyyy")&" to " &TEXT(C3, "m/d/yyyy")

 

Notice that this maintains the date formatting.

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

=IF(B3<>"",TEXT(B3, "m/d/yyyy")&" to " &TEXT(C3, "m/d/yyyy"),TEXT(C3,"m/d/yyyy") )

or

=TEXT(B3, "m/d/yyyy") & IF(C3<>"", " to " & TEXT(C3, "m/d/yyyy"), "")

Concatenate Date in Google Sheets

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