EXCEL
specify that empty values
USING TEXTJOIN WITH AN ARRAY
Six new calculations have been added since last year
for Office 365 subscribers. One of those, the TEXTJOIN
function, is proving to be more flexible and more
powerful than it originally appeared. When
TEXTJOIN was introduced in 2017, it seemed like Microsoft
was trying to improve deficiencies in the CONCATENATE
function. But there’s more to it.
BY BILL JELEN
In the past, if you wanted to concate-
nate a list of names in column A, you
couldn’t use a simple formula such as
=CONCATENATE(A1:A26). Instead, you
had to specify each cell individually:
=CONCATENATE(A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,…A26).
Unless the values stored in column A
happened to have trailing spaces, you
would end up with a hard-to-read re-
sult like AndyBettyCharlieDaleEddy.
See more figures TEXTJOIN offers some improve-
in the online ments over CONCATENATE. The
version at: syntax of TEXTJOIN is =TEXTJOIN
(Delimiter, Ignore_Empty, Text1,
[Text2],…). Here’s how it works:
l The first argument lets you
specify a delimiter to appear be-
tween each value. For example,
including “, ” would make sure
that the names appear with a
comma and space between
them: Andy, Betty, Charlie, Dale,
Eddy. (See Figure 1.)
l In the second argument, you can
58 / STRATEGIC FINANCE / April 2018
should be ignored. This will pre-
vent two consecutive delimiters
from appearing. Say that you re-
moved Charlie from cell A4 in
Figure 1. By specifying TRUE for
the Ignore_Empty argument,
you will get Andy, Betty, Dale in-
stead of Andy, Betty, , Dale.
l The text arguments (Text1,
Text2, etc.) can specify a range.
It can be one column, like A1:A26,
or multiple columns, like A1:Z26.
It can even be a 3-D reference,
such as ‘Jan 2018:Dec 2018’!A1:Z26.
SUPPORT FOR ARRAY FORMULAS
Array formulas are a powerful class of
formulas in Excel. These formulas can
perform a calculation over several
cells in a range and then return the
results to another function. While
array formulas are powerful, they
don’t work with most Excel functions.
They certainly never worked with
CONCATENATE.
While Excel Help doesn’t reveal it,
the TEXTJOIN function does support
an array as the third argument. This
allows you to do some interesting cal-
culations inside of TEXTJOIN. Say that
you wanted to retrieve a list of people
who RSVP’d “Yes” to an event.
In Figure 2, column A contains the
names. Column B contains “Yes” or
“No” for RSVP. You want to find all of
the people who have a RSVP value of
Yes. The array portion of the formula
is IF(B2:B26=“Yes”,A2:A26,“”). In English,
this formula says, “If column B says
Yes, then return the name in column
A; otherwise return an empty text.”
The consecutive quotation marks (“”)
indicate an empty value.
Using this array formula as the
third argument to TEXTJOIN sends
Andy, Betty, “”, Dale, Eddy, “”, Gloria to the
TEXTJOIN function. If you specify
TRUE for the Ignore_Empty argu-
ment, Excel will return Andy, Betty,
Dale, Eddy, Gloria.
Like most array formulas, you
have to use a special shortcut key.
Type =TEXTJOIN(“, ”,TRUE,IF(B2:B26=“Yes”,
A2:A26,“”)), but don’t press Enter. Instead, hold
down Ctrl+Shift, then press Enter. Release
Ctrl+Shift. This keystroke combination, called
Ctrl+Shift+Enter, is required any time you enter
or edit an array formula. If you do the keystroke
correctly, you’ll see curly braces around the for-
mula in the formula bar.

RETURNING ALL MATCHES FROM A VLOOKUP

The VLOOKUP function returns only the first
match found in the specified lookup table. I often Figure 1
have people ask me if they can return all match-
ing values.
If you’re looking up numbers, you can replace
the VLOOKUP with SUMIF or SUMIFS. Say that
you have product in A, customer in B, revenue in
C. Using =VLOOKUP(“Orange”,A2:C15,2,False) will re-
turn the first customer who purchased an orange.
Using =VLOOKUP(“Orange”,A2:C15,3,False) will return
the price of the first order.
Ever since Excel 97, you could sum all of the
revenue from orders for oranges using =SUMIF
(A2:A15,E2,C2:C15). But there wasn’t an easy way to
return a list of all of the customers who had pur-
chased oranges. Figure 2
By using =TEXTJOIN(“, “,TRUE,IF(A2:A15=E2,B2:
B15,”“)) followed by Ctrl+Shift+Enter, you can re-
turn a list of all of the customers who purchased
an orange.

SUPPORT FOR 3-D RANGES

I was having a casual conversation with one of
the Excel team project managers who wrote the
specification for the TEXTJOIN function. I was
thrilled when he mentioned that TEXTJOIN
would support arrays. I was unsure when I
would ever have a use for 3-D references, but
you can specify that you want to concatenate all
of the cells in all of the sheets. For example: =TEXT
JOIN(“, “,True,January:December!A1:Z26) will return
any value found in cells A1:Z26 of every work-
sheet between (and including) January and
December.
The TEXTJOIN function is currently only in
the subscription versions of Office 365. If you
own a perpetual license of Excel, you’ll have to Along with TEXTJOIN, Office 365
wait until Office 2019 ships later this year for the subscribers can also use the
new functionality. SF
new IFS, MAXIFS, MINIFS, SWITCH,
and CONCAT functions.
Bill Jelen is the host of MrExcel.com. Send questions for
future articles to IMA@MrExcel.com.

April 2018 / STRATEGIC FINANCE / 59

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