HOW DO I MERGE CELLS IN EXCEL WITHOUT LOSING DATA HOW TO
It is perfect for when you want to merge cells or combine ‘FIRST NAMES’ with ‘LAST NAMES’ that are in separate columns and merging them into one cell.īefore I get into how to merge cells in Excel, let’s talk about exactly what happens when you try to use Merge & Center here. For reporting and further analysis, you need them to be combined into one column, so it’s best to use the Concatenate function or the “&” Operator for this. In the SALES REPORT below, you have the First Name in Column A and Last Name in Column B. You can merge or join more than two cells together whether it contains text, numbers, or both. The Concatenate Function will merge multiple cells into a single cell and keep both values. Let me introduce you to the Concatenate Function and the ampersand “&” operator that will merge cells in Excel! This feature should definitely be bookmarked as it will come in handy when cleaning, transforming and analyzing data in Excel. But this is not what you were looking for. Now, if you use Merge & Center or Merge Across Selection, it will delete the text in the second column and only display the First Name as a merged cell. Say, you have the First Name and Last Name in different columns and you want to merge them in a single column containing First & Last Name. There may be times when you are dumped with data in Excel and it is not formatted quite the way you want.
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The CONCATENATE function combines cells in Excel quickly. If you don’t want to lose the text from the merged cells in Excel, use the CONCATENATE Function (pre Excel 2019), the CONCAT Function (Excel 2019 & Office 365) or the ampersand “&” operator. If you use the above options to merge cells in Excel, it will keep the text at the leftmost cell (A1 in this case) and remove the text from all other cells. You can see that even though the data is merged across cell A1: F1, you can still select and refer to each cell individually! Using the CONCATENATE Function Step 3: Under the Alignment Tab, in the Horizontal drop-down box, select “ Center Across Selection” Step 2: Press Ctrl + 1 to bring up the Format Cells dialog box. Below we explain how to apply the Center Across Selection: This would merge the cells across columns and still let you select each cell individually. To achieve the same result as Merge & Center without having the above restrictions, use the Center Across Selection feature. Here is a video from Microsoft showing merging and unmerging cells in action. Dates cannot easily be copy-pasted elsewhere.Single column can’t be selected if it contains any merged cells.Excel ‘Sort’ command will not work on ranges that contain the Excel merge cells.
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When you click on the drop-down arrow beside the Merge & Center button in the Alignment group, you will see it contains a drop-down list with additional options and each one produces a different result: Notice that the reference for the 6 merged cells cell points at A1.īy following this step-by-step guide on How to Merge Cells in Excel you can create headers/titles for you report that will make it much easier to understand. Step 3: The currently selected cells will be merged, and their contents will be center aligned. Step 2: Go to Home > ‘Alignment’ group > Merge & Center button Step 1: Select the cells A1:F1 that you want to merge. In the example below, you can see that the text “SALES REPORT” is located in a single cell in A1. This feature will retain the value in the upper-left cell but keep in mind that all data in the other merged cells will be deleted. It is a great way to create a label that spans several columns. A great way to customize the layout of your Excel worksheet is to use the Merge & Center feature in Excel.