How can I concatenate strings in VBA?

excel vba
ilya n. picture ilya n. · Nov 13, 2009 · Viewed 325.9k times · Source

This question comes from a comment under Range.Formula= in VBA throws a strange error.

I wrote that program by trial-and-error so I naturally tried + to concatenate strings.

But is & more correct than + for concatenating strings?

Answer

Joey picture Joey · Nov 13, 2009

& is always evaluated in a string context, while + may not concatenate if one of the operands is no string:

"1" + "2" => "12"
"1" + 2   => 3
1 + "2"   => 3
"a" + 2   => type mismatch

This is simply a subtle source of potential bugs and therefore should be avoided. & always means "string concatenation", even if its arguments are non-strings:

"1" & "2" => "12"
"1" &  2  => "12"
 1  & "2" => "12"
 1  &  2  => "12"
"a" &  2  => "a2"

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