Google Sheets Tip: Generate a Comma-Separated List of Values From a Column

Using a comma-separated list of values is a fairly common format when entering multiple values as input to a form. You might have already encountered this while managing an ad campain where you can enter a list of keywords or when needing to send a marketing email to multiple recipients.

If you already have a spreadsheet where you maintain these types of data as rows in a column, you may be wondering whether there's an easy way to convert rows in a specific column into a list of comma-separated values.

With Google Sheets, you can certainly do this using their JOIN() function.

For example, you might have an "Email" column in the spreadsheet.  To concatenate the values in this column with a comma delimiter, you can use a formula like this:

=JOIN(",", A2:A6)

Which will then output something like this:

Google Sheets JOIN function using comma as the delimiter.

You can use multiple characters as a delimiter as well, let's try using two dashes:

=JOIN("--", A2:A6)

The output will then be:

Google Sheets JOIN function with multiple delimiters

As you can see, it's a very simple function to use and could really come in handy. :)


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Tags: howto, google sheets, google sheets tips