There are two common ways to add single quotes to text in Excel:
Method 1: Use Double Quotes with Single Quotes
="'"&A2&"'"
This particular example adds single quotes around the text in cell A2.
Method 2: Use CHAR(39)
=CHAR(39)&A2&CHAR(39)
This particular example also adds single quotes around the text in cell A2.
Note that CHAR(39) is the Excel character code for single quotes.
The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following list of basketball team names in Excel:
Example 1: Use Double Quotes with Single Quotes
We can type the following formula into cell B2 to return the text from cell A2 surrounded with single quotes:
="'"&A2&"'"
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:
Column B now displays the text from each corresponding cell in column A surrounded by single quotes.
Example 2: Use CHAR(39)
We can type the following formula into cell B2 to return the text from cell A2 surrounded with single quotes:
=CHAR(39)&A2&CHAR(39)
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:
Column B now displays the text from each corresponding cell in column A surrounded by single quotes.
Notice that this method also produces the same result as the previous method.
Feel free to use whichever method you prefer.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:
Excel: How to Extract Text Before a Character
Excel: How to Extract Text After a Character
Excel: How to Remove Specific Text from Cells
