What function would you use to concatenate text strings in Excel?

The function used to concatenate text strings in Excel is the CONCATENATE function or the "and" operator. The CONCATENATE function allows users to combine multiple text strings into one continuous string, which is particularly useful when you want to combine values from different cells. For example, using =CONCATENATE(A1, " ", A2) would merge the contents of cells A1 and A2 with a space in between them.

Additionally, the "and" operator (represented by the ampersand &) can also be used for concatenation. For instance, you could achieve the same result as above by using =A1 & " " & A2. This versatility makes either method suitable for text concatenation tasks in Excel.

Other options do not serve as direct alternatives for this function. While "JOIN" does not exist as a standalone function in Excel, the "+" operator is primarily used for numeric addition rather than text concatenation. The MERGE function is related to cell formatting rather than text processing, and the TEXTJOIN function, while useful for joining text with a delimiter, is a more advanced tool that can handle arrays and specified separators.