

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. 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.
#Merging cells in excel 2011 how to#
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.


Excel ‘Sort’ command will not work on ranges that contain the Excel merge cells.Excel Functions won’t work on merged cells.

Here are a couple of shortfalls once cells have been merged: If any data was lost when the original cells were merged, they will not be restored (unless your select CTRL + Z to undo the last action). NB: Even though this is a fairly simple process to know how to merge cells in Excel, it is not highly recommended, and further below we explain the alternatives to merge cells in Excel. Step 2: Click the Merge & Center button or select the Unmerge Cells option from the drop-down menu. Step 1: Select the cells that you want to unmerge. Once you have learned how to merge cells in Excel, you should also know how to unmerge them.
