Merge Cells in Excel in 5 Minutes or Less

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Knowing the ins and outs of Excel is essential for organizing data, understanding analytics, and getting the most from your marketing efforts. The tool is great for quickly processing vast amounts of data, but it can be overwhelming if you don’t spend the majority of your workday whipping up spreadsheets.

Fortunately, a few basic skills are all you need to put together an easy-to-read spreadsheet. One is knowing how to merge cells in Excel. Whether you’re planning blog articles for the upcoming quarter, creating an email list for a targeted campaign, or designing SEO-friendly Google ads, merging cells is a handy way to organize your information.

To sharpen your skills, we’ll cover several ways to combine cells.

How to merge two cells
How to merge and center cells
How to merge multiple cells
How to merge cells without losing data
A shortcut to merge cells
Why can’t I merge cells?

Don’t want to start from scratch? Use these free Excel templates as a foundation for your own marketing spreadsheets.

How to Merge Two Cells in Excel

Merging is a way to turn two small cells into one new, large cell. This is useful for organizing information and creating headers, without the need to resize individual cells. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Highlight the two adjacent cells you want to merge (I’m merging A1 and B1 in the example).

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Step 2: Under the Home tab, click the ‘Merge’ icon and choose ‘Merge Cells’.

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Step 3: That’s it! You’ve merged the cells.

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Note: When combining cells, only the data in the upper left cell is saved. Make sure to save the information from the other cell so it’s not lost. If you happen to have data in both A1 and B1, Excel won’t simply wipe it. This alert will pop up:

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Don’t want to delete the data? Click ‘Cancel,’ and copy/paste the information into a separate document or cell before merging. If you only need the information in the upper-left cell, click ‘OK’ to merge the cells.