How to add a prefix or suffix to a cell
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Bolt fixed text onto values — ID- codes, units, currency labels, domain suffixes.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | ="ID-"&A2&"-US" | & joins text. To add without a formula, use a custom format like "ID-"@ (keeps the value editable). |
| Google Sheets | ="ID-"&A2&"-US" | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | ="ID-"&A2&"-US" | Identical. |
How it works
Wrap the literal text in quotes and join it with & on either side of the cell: "ID-" before and "-US" after turns 4092 into ID-4092-US. The result is text, so it won't sum or sort numerically — if you only need the look and want to keep the number usable, apply a custom cell format ("ID-"0"-US") instead, which prepends/appends on display while leaving the real value intact. For many cells, TEXTJOIN or a fill-down copies the same pattern down the column.
Verified, not just documented
We ran ="ID-"&A2&"-US" in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned ID-4092-US — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned ID-4092-US for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.