How to Merge Cells in Excel: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide
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Omar Haddad
- . November 25, 2025
- . Update: November 25, 2025 7:30 pm
It is crucial to learn how to merge cells in Excel software to build clean, organized and attractive spreadsheets. Be it forming headers, merging various cells in order to create titles, and tabling, Excel allows a number of merge options, which helps combine data presentation. This guide contains simple steps on how to merge the cells in excel, Merge and Center, Merge Across and unmerge the cells as required. It also brings out major precautions including loss of data in secondary cells during the merging. At the end, you will learn all the major tricks of learning how to merge cells in Excel in the most effective way and enhance the layout and readability of your worksheet.
The combining cells in excel is a formatting method employed in joining two or more adjacent cells to make one bigger cell. This is usually employed to produce well-formed headers, center titles or design cleaner table forms. Microsoft Excel has several merge functions, which are applicable to various formatting requirements. The knowledge of these options will aid you in working faster and being able to present information professionally.
How to Merge Cells in Excel Using Merge & Center
The most useful is Merge & Center that is best suited to using headings of several columns that are centered.
Step-by-Step Instructions:
- Select the cells: Click and drag to select the desired cells.
- Open the Merge option: click on Home tab and find the group of Alignment.
- Click Merge and Center: This combines all the cells that have been selected into one cell and centrally aligns the text in the cell at the upper left.
Noteworthy remark: The value in the upper-left cell is the only one that survived. Excel will permanently delete the information in all the other chosen cells, and therefore make sure that they are either blank or not needed.
Other Merge Options in Excel
Excel has other merging styles to assist you to format data not centering or not over rows.
1. Merge Across
Divides cells Vertically in each row but not horizontally.
Applicable in formulating line based headings in numerous columns.
2. Merge Cells
Fuses all the cells that were selected into a single large cell.
This option is not automatic as the text is centered as in Merge and Center and allows a greater control over the formatting.
How to Unmerge Cells in Excel
In case you have to change your mind on the merging, you can do it easily with Excel:
- Select the merged cell.
- Click on the drop-down of Merge and Center in the Home tab.
- Choose Unmerge Cells.
Excel will disaggregate the combined cell into the separate ones and the initial content would be shown in the first cell at the top left corner.
Best Practices for Merging Cells in Excel
- Do not combine cells in the data tables when sorting or filtering the data, the merging operation can interfere with Excel operations.
- Always verify data in cells prior to merging to avoid the chances of loss by chances.
- Merging is mostly used in headings, titles, dashboard design or layout.
