How to Merge Cells in excel

In today’s post we would take you through merging cells in excel. What’s the use of merging cells you may ask. Well, it is most useful for presentation purposes. For example, you may want to indicate a single header for multiple columns or rows in your spreadsheet

Our example for today shows a summary of some key income statement metrics of a company for the month of June.

Merge Cells Step 1

We have three headers on the third row that show the actual performance, budget and variance between these two. But remember, these three column headers represent performance for the month of June only. This implies that the header on cell D2 should extend till column F.

How do we extend this? Easy, just follow the steps below:

Merge Cells in Excel

Step 1: Highlight from cell D2 to the other adjacent (contiguous) cells which in our example are cells E2 and F2

Merge Cells Step 2

Step 2: Navigate to the home tab, then the Alignment group and click on the Merge & Centre dropdown and select from the options available.

Merge Cells Step 3

Step 3: In our example, we would prefer the June heading to be placed at the center of the 3 columns, so we would select Merge & Center once again.

Merge Cells Step 4

Result: Our June heading is now displayed at the center across the 3 columns

Merge Cells Step 5

Unmerge Cells in Excel

We would be following on from our example above. To unmerge cells in excel, please follow these easy steps:

Step 1: Locate the merged cells and select. In our example, we would select cells D2:F2 by clicking on June – 20X2

Merge Cells Step 5

Step 2: Repeat the process of navigating to the drop down of Merge & Center:

Merge Cells Step 3

Step 3: Select the last option in the dropdown which is Unmerge Cells

Unmerge Cells Step 3

Result: Now we are back to where we started, however you can see that cells E2 and F2 still retain D2’s formatting

Unmerge Cells Step 4

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