Combining cells unless a cell contains certain text

Question

I have an Excel spreadsheet with 7 cells (in a column) with data in, these are C13 to C19 I have a formula that combines all the data in these cells together and puts it into one cell, this formula is =C13&", "&C14&", "&C15&", "&C16&", "&C17&", "&C18&", "&C19 and works fine. However, can I alter this formula to miss out on any cell that contains the text "Nothing else carby"?

You can use TEXTJOIN() if you have Excel2019 or Excel365. — Harun24HR
You can check every single one with IF combined with COUNTIF if they contain the text Nothing else carby using wildcards *. If the count is 0, return cell & ",". IF count is not 0, then return nothing "". And then combine all cells into one. Indeed a long formula. — Foxfire And Burns And Burns
Thank you @Foxfire And Burns And Burns - I do have Excel 2019, how would that formula be written out please? — rnmuk
If you have Excel2019, then try TEXTJOIN. I do not have it here so can't help. But to check a single cell, if would be something like IF(COUNTIF(C13;"*"&"Nothing else carby"&"*")=0;C13&", ";"") — Foxfire And Burns And Burns

Dominique Dominique · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-28T08:32:16

The formula should not be that long, as you can see:

=TEXTJOIN(",",TRUE,IF(C13:C19="Nothing","", C13:C19))

(I just used "Nothing" instead of the whole word for readability reasons.)

Explanation of the parameters:

"," : delimiter: between every cell content, a comma is added.
TRUE : treatment of blank cells (don't put them).
IF (...) : In case cell content is "Nothing", put an empty string. 
           In combination with the previous parameter,
           just one comma will be put in the result:
           "a,b,c,e,f,g" and not "a,b,c,,e,f,g" (see result).

Used data:

a
b
c
Nothing
e
f
g

Result:

a,b,c,e,f,g

Combining cells unless a cell contains certain text

2 Answers