The result is that it looks exactly the same as if merge and centered, however, notice I can click on the individual cells in the heading and when I click on cell F4 and pull down to row 29, it only highlights those cells: We'll go to the Alignment tab and under Horizontal pick 'Center across Selection' and say OK. Then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl +1 to bring up the formatting dialog box. Next we are going to select the cells B2:F2 and B29:F29. So how do we avoid this? First we need to un-merge the cells and take them off being centered. It is also picking up the values from the dates that are in column C:

The issue is if I just want to quickly highlight column F to see what my sales were for both years, I can click on cell F4 and pull down, but as soon as I get to that merge and centered heading in the bottom block it expands to cover all columns B through F which shows a total over two million which I know was not the case. Heading each block is the sales year and, as you can see, they both use the merge and center option in Excel. So here I have two years' worth of data for some stock parts that we have and the sales on those: When you get a preview, look for Download in the upper right hand corner. You can download the file here and follow along.

Mynda is an excellent Excel resource and I strongly encourage you to subscribe to her blog (right after you subscribe to mine!). This is a tip I picked up from Mynda Treacy at My Online Training Hub. In this tutorial we are going to look at the benefits of using Center Across Selection vs Merge and Center in Excel.

Merge and center in excel