Convert a column into a comma separated list

Assuming your data starts in A1 I would put the following in column B:

B1:

=A1

B2:

=B1&","&A2

You can then paste column B2 down the whole column. The last cell in column B should now be a comma separated list of column A.


  • Copy the column in Excel
  • Open Word
  • "Paste special" as text only
  • Select the data in Word (the one that you need to convert to text separated with ,), press Ctrl-H (Find & replace)
  • In "Find what" box type ^p
  • In "Replace with" box type ,
  • Select "Replace all"

If you have Office 365 Excel then you can use TEXTJOIN():

=TEXTJOIN(",",TRUE,A:A)

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I actually just created a module in VBA which does all of the work. It takes my ranged list and creates a comma-delimited string which is output into the cell of my choice:

Function csvRange(myRange As Range)
    Dim csvRangeOutput
    Dim entry as variant
    For Each entry In myRange
        If Not IsEmpty(entry.Value) Then
            csvRangeOutput = csvRangeOutput & entry.Value & ","
        End If
    Next
    csvRange = Left(csvRangeOutput, Len(csvRangeOutput) - 1)
End Function

So then in my cell, I just put =csvRange(A:A) and it gives me the comma-delimited list.


An alternative approach would be to paste the Excel column into this in-browser tool:

convert.town/column-to-comma-separated-list

It converts a column of text to a comma separated list.

As the user is copying and pasting to another program anyway, this may be just as easy for them.