How to concatenate a date with text (without getting a number)
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Build strings like "Report for 7/24/2026" — where naive joining shows 46227 instead of the date.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | ="Report for "&TEXT(A2,"m/d/yyyy") | TEXT controls the format: "mmmm d" gives July 24, "yyyy-mm-dd" gives ISO. |
| Google Sheets | ="Report for "&TEXT(A2,"m/d/yyyy") | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | ="Report for "&TEXT(A2,"M/D/YYYY") | Identical (codes case-insensitive). |
How it works
Joining a date with & uses the cell's underlying value — the day-count serial number — so "Report for "&A2 produces "Report for 46227". Wrapping the date in TEXT with a format code renders it the way you'd see it in the cell: "Report for 7/24/2026". The same trick applies to numbers that lose their formatting when concatenated: currency (TEXT(B2,"$#,##0.00")), percentages (TEXT(C2,"0.0%")), and times.
Verified, not just documented
We ran ="Report for "&TEXT(DATE(2026,7,24),"M/D/YYYY") in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned Report for 7/24/2026 — 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 Report for 7/24/2026 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.
Functions used
TEXT — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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