& Operator

This page is specific to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Language Reference for Office 2010.

Used to force string concatenation of two expressions.

Syntax

result = expression1 & expression2

The & operator syntax has these parts:

Remarks

If an expression is not a string, it is converted to a String variant. The data type of result is String if both expressions are string expressions; otherwise, result is a String variant. If both expressions are Null, result is Null. However, if only one expression is Null, that expression is treated as a zero-length string ("") when concatenated with the other expression. Any expression that is Empty is also treated as a zero-length string.

Example

This example uses the & operator to force string concatenation.

Dim MyStr
MyStr = "Hello" & " World"    ' Returns "Hello World".
MyStr = "Check " & 123 & " Check"    ' Returns "Check 123 Check".