Concatenate – Fancy Word, Simple Meaning

Concatenate is one of many fancy words we learn while working in litigation support. It is a technical term and it is a verb defined as “to link (things) together in a chain or series.”

Most of the time we are using concatenation to piece together multiple values. We also have the ability to insert additional values “in between” the original values.

We use concatenation techniques within many software tools, but for this explanation I will use Excel.

In this first example, we have address fields that are currently separate values and we need to concatenate them into one full address. Using this concatenation formula, we are almost there, but we are missing the spaces between the values. All of the values are running together and look messy.

In the example below, we are performing the same concatenation as above, however we are using the CONCATENATE function instead. We are still missing spaces between the values.

In the example below, we are using the ampersands and we concatenate some punctuation to make the result look nicer.

In the example below, we are performing the same concatenation as above, however we are using the CONCATENATE function instead.

In the example below, we are concatenating the first name and last name into a “last name first” format and inserting a comma and space to make it look nicer.

In the example below, we are concatenating the file path and the filename and inserting a backslash in the middle.

Hopefully these examples give you an overview of the possibilities for concatenating values. We use this technique often when manipulating data in a litigation support role.

NOTE:  We are using ampersands or the CONCATENATE function to concatenate values. They both work, it is your preference.