In the long run, this will save considerable time and headaches. save this workbook under any other filename, unless youve disabled macros. Working in Marketing Analytics and using Excel 9 hours/day, I have not used merged cells in four years (I did the first 18 months because I didn't know of the other capability). Reducing Workbook and Worksheet Frustration Hacks 116 Excel users know that. In the Select Files to Merge into Current Workbook dialog box, click a copy that has changes to be merged, and then click OK. You can also set the border at the same time. To locate hidden sheets in Excel, go to View tab and check if the Unhide option is greyed out. You can see this with the yellow bar on top of your worksheet: In protected mode you can’t add a grouping. To use it, select the cells that you would normally merge, then go to Format Cells (CTRL + 1), then on Alignment tab, for horizontal, in the dropdown, choose "Center Across Selection". Similar for downloaded Excel files: Excel opens these workbooks in the Protected View mode. However, on this file, that option is greyed out. In order to find and fix them, I typically used Find >Options>Format>Alignment, and from there check the merge cells box to find them. So, my thought is: good that it is greyed out.Įxcel provides the equivalent of merged cells, but does not limit or interfere with any other capabilities: "Center Across Selection". Hi there, I'm trying to clean some data I received from another department, and they were unfortunately big believers in using merged cells. Merged cells prevent the use of many valuable tools in Excel, and limit future use/expansion. Merged cells should never be used in Excel. I'll give my personal opinion, first, then discuss an alternative.