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Microsoft to Silently Remove the CONCATENATE Function from Excel, Offers Paid Alternative: CONCAT

posted by martyb on Monday November 26 2018, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the putting-it-all-together dept.

deimios writes:

If you've ever tried to use the CONCATENATE function in Microsoft Excel to merge the values in a range of cells, you know it doesn't work unless you add each cell to the function, one by one.

You might have noticed the following message in the support article for CONCATENATE:

Important: In Excel 2016, Excel Mobile, and Excel Online, this function has been replaced with the CONCAT function. Although the CONCATENATE function is still available for backward compatibility, you should consider using CONCAT from now on. This is because CONCATENATE may not be available in future versions of Excel.

Meet the alternatives: CONCAT and TEXTJOIN

for CONCAT and TEXTJOIN:

Note: This feature is not available in Excel 2016 unless you have an Office 365 subscription. If you are an Office 365 subscriber, make sure you have the latest version of Office.

While it is admirable that Microsoft is finally fixing some of the idiosyncrasies of its software, I fear the future will bring a level of fragmentation unseen since the office 2003 to 2007 switch.

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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday November 26 2018, @04:58PM (2 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday November 26 2018, @04:58PM (#766491)
    PDFedit [pdfedit.cz] is the default PDF editor that is pre-installed on our Windows builds, but there are some other options available for those that need features it doesn't support yet or just don't like the interface, including PDFSam (also F/OSS) and a couple of other freeware/commercial options as well including CutePDF and FoxIt (which also provides the default PDF reader). Personally I switched to CutePDF as I was already familiar with it from a previous employer.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:32PM (#766533)

    Thanks. I'm always on the lookout to add good open source programs to my list of alternatives.

  • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday November 26 2018, @06:40PM

    by NewNic (6420) on Monday November 26 2018, @06:40PM (#766539) Journal

    PDFedit [pdfedit.cz] is the default PDF editor that is pre-installed on our Windows builds,

    Does it work with the FBAR PDF document? [treas.gov]

    Before you say, just use the online tool ... the online tool is a one-shot affair. You can't start creating it, save it, then come back after a while. Instead, you have to sit down with all your data and complete it all in one session.

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    lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory