A delimiter is part of the formula, not the data
The sample data contains five Labels in E2:E6: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. With / as the delimiter, the independently concatenated result is:
Alpha / Beta / Gamma / Delta / Epsilon
The TEXTJOIN examples use a deliberately longer range, E2:E7, so the blank E7 tests ignore_empty = TRUE (or 1). In implementations that follow their documented semantics, the trailing blank should not create another slash. We have not run the five-row example in Numbers, Zoho or ONLYOFFICE; the result is an independent check target.
Why fixed & examples aren’t full replacements
An explicit concatenation of five values, such as E2 & " / " & E3 ..., produces the known five-label output. It does not automatically skip blanks when new rows are introduced and it must be extended manually as the table grows. We label these as alternatives, not TEXTJOIN parity.
In Apple Numbers, accidentally selecting header cells can cause formula issues; the official TEXTJOIN documentation specifically cautions about them. In Calc, the delimiter itself can be a reference or range, which has different rules than a literal separator. In another application’s import, text cells that look like numbers or dates may have been converted before joining.
A repeatable check
- Populate the five labels using the downloadable CSV.
- Join E2:E7 with an explicit
ignore_emptyflag, leaving E7 blank. - Verify no trailing
/after Epsilon. - Enter a value in E7 and check that it appears exactly once with one separator.
- Enter two consecutive empty labels in a longer range and test whether each creates an unwanted separator.
- Reopen the file in its destination spreadsheet program before promising compatibility.
See text extraction comparisons if the imported cells first need cleaning.
Documentation and testing disclosure
Official vendor sources and version scopes appear beside each software candidate above. Expected outputs are independently reasoned from the shared sample; the five new comparisons do not claim native execution in any of the eight applications. Read more about how we distinguish documentation from execution in our editorial standards.