How to combine first and last names into one cell
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Merge separate first-name and last-name columns into a full name.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =A2&" "&B2 | Or =CONCAT(A2," ",B2). For "Last, First" use =B2&", "&A2. |
| Google Sheets | =A2&" "&B2 | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =A2&" "&B2 | Identical. |
How it works
The & operator joins text, and the " " in the middle inserts the space — giving "Ada Lovelace". It works identically in all three apps and is easier to type than CONCATENATE. To join a whole column of name parts at once, TEXTJOIN(" ",TRUE,A2:C2) also skips any empty middle-name cells automatically.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =A2&" "&B2 in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned Ada Lovelace — 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 Ada Lovelace 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.