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Chapter 13

Text Formulas

and Functions

In This Chapter
Understanding how to construct text in formulas
Creating formulas that combine text entries stored in different cells
Changing the case of text entries using the Text functions

t first, thinking about text formulas and functions in spreadsheets may seem strange,
Aaccustomed as we all are to thinking of them as number crunchers. Nevertheless, not
only can you construct formulas that use text as operands with the special concatenation
or linking operator, but you can also build formulas using any number of Text functions that
require text exclusively in their arguments.

In this chapter, you get a chance to practice building text formulas that link together separate
text cell entries whose text should be entered together in the same cell. You also get a chance
to use Text functions to convert text entries to the proper upper- and lowercase letters.

Constructing Text Formulas

Simple text formulas (that is, those that don’t rely on any Text functions) merely join pieces
of text together using the & (ampersand) operator. It’s the so-called concatenation operator,
which means to join or string together in a series. Here are a couple of caveats to text
formulas:
The text operands must be enclosed in sets of quotation marks.
Spaces must be included in the operands (and within the quotes) if you don’t want the
text to glom altogether as a single illegible clump of letters.

For example, if you want to create a text formula in cell B2 that joins the word Summary to
the text entry Order, entered in cell A2, and you enter the following formula in this cell:

=A2&Summary