The _________ function in MS-Excel 2010 is used to join several text items into one text item cell. 

The correct answer is CONCATENATE.

Key Points

• CONCATENATE is a built-in function in MS-Excel used to join multiple text strings into a single text string.
• This function is available in MS-Excel 2010 and earlier versions. However, in newer versions like Excel 2016 and later, it has been replaced with the TEXTJOIN and CONCAT functions.
• Syntax: =CONCATENATE(text1, [text2], ...), where text1, text2, etc., are the text items you want to combine.
• The CONCATENATE function does not insert spaces or delimiters between the combined strings. Users must include spaces or symbols as arguments.
• Example: =CONCATENATE("Hello", " ", "World") combines "Hello" and "World" with a space in between, resulting in "Hello World".

Additional Information

• TEXTJOIN Function:
  • Introduced in Excel 2016, it allows combining text strings using a delimiter.
  • Syntax: =TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore_empty, text1, [text2], ...).
  • It is more versatile than CONCATENATE as it can ignore empty cells and add delimiters automatically.
• CONCAT Function:
  • Also introduced in Excel 2016, it is a simplified version of CONCATENATE.
  • Does not support delimiters or ignoring empty cells, unlike TEXTJOIN.
• Excel String Functions:
  • LEFT: Extracts a specific number of characters from the beginning of a text string.
  • RIGHT: Extracts a specific number of characters from the end of a text string.
  • MID: Extracts characters from a text string, starting at a specified position.
• Excel Versions:
  • Excel 2010 and earlier rely on CONCATENATE for string combination.
  • Excel 2016 and later provide advanced functions like TEXTJOIN and CONCAT for enhanced text manipulation.