During data collection there can always be situations where you know what you need, but you don't know how to explain it to the program. For example: do you have a large volume of data and want to include titles for clarity, but don't know how? With the Excel spreadsheet program in the Microsoft 365 package you can combine cells and rows in just a few clicks..
On the? Home? Tab, click the down arrow next to the ? Merge and center? Symbol. to open the drop-down menu and view the different options.
For the next steps, we are going to use the fictitious monthly billing data of a large company and its subsidiaries. The somewhat complex table must be sorted with the help of titles and cell combinations ..
In the row above the data we want to insert a title with the name of the company and, for this, we have to combine all the cells.
Mark the cells, columns or rows where you want to enter the title. Here you can both join columns and combine rows. Click on the? Home? and select the button? Merge and center? which is located in the central part..
When you select? Combine and center ?, you will see that the cells are combined and the title automatically appears centered in the new cell.
Note that when merging cells in Excel, only the content of the upper left cell is adopted. Text in neighboring cells is automatically deleted.
Instead of getting to? Merge and Center? Via? Start ?, you can also right-click directly on the marked cells. The symbol? Merge and center? it is also found in the context menu. It is recommended to enter the cell content once the corresponding cells are merged.
Now the cells will be combined and the text will be centered automatically .
Once you've joined all the desired cells, the table should look much clearer:
In? Home? there is also the option? Merge horizontally ?. Note that with it you can merge cells without any problem, but this can only be done in rows: cells are only combined in the corresponding row , not in the column.
The function? Merge cells? Excel works basically like? Merge and center cells ?, but without centering. You just have to mark the cells you want to combine and use the function? Combine cells ?. The text in the original cell is not automatically centered, but remains aligned to the left or right.
If you want to separate the merged cells, mark the cell again and go to? Merge and center? via the right mouse button or? Start? . There, select? Separate cells ?.
Thus, the union of cells is eliminated. Text that was in the original cells is not restored by this action .
Another possibility to join the content of several cells and transmit it to a combined cell is to use the ampersand symbol & . If, for example, you have a list of customers with separate streets, numbers and postal codes, and you want to collect them in a combined Excel cell without losing the content of each of the cells, you should use the following formula:
=(referencia de celda)&(referencia de celda)&(referencia de celda)
Step 1 . As described above, combine the cells in which you want to insert the content:
Step 2 . Place the mouse cursor over the first cell you want to combine and enter, as described above, the formula to combine the content in the desired Excel cell.
Step 3 . The contents are now joined in a merged cell, although they appear out of order. Then complete the formula with a comma and a space as follows:
=(referencia de celda)&? ?&(referencia de celda)?,?&? ?(referencia de celda)
The content now appears in the merged cell, sorted and separated by punctuation marks . Don't forget to join each of the elements of the formula with the symbol & :
Step 4 . Then you can also automatically join all the content in the same way, applying the formula used to the rest of the rows using the fill handle:
The CONCATENATE function also allows you to join cell contents in a merged cell similar to the & symbol .
