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Merging multiple groups of cells simultaneously?

Anonymous
2012-07-12T03:54:39+00:00

In my spreadsheet, I want to merge cells A1 and A2, B1 and B2, C1 and C2, etc. so that the whole top row of cells will be two rows tall, but still one column wide. Is there any way to do this without having to merge each two-cell group one at a time? Like, can I tell excel to merge the two rows for every column of the spreadsheet?

Or, if that can't be done, is there any shortcut to merge the cells or do I have to use the "Merge & Center" button?

Edit: To explain better, I want the top cell in each column to be two rows tall. The reason for this is that some columns require a single value, while others require two values, and to keep it looking neat I would like to merge the cells for single-value columns. And since there are far more single-value columns, it makes sense to merge the top two cells of every column then unmerge as needed.

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-07-12T04:46:45+00:00

    There might be a better way but I would do the following;

    1. Merge A1 & A2
    2. Click on the FORMAT PAINTER icon (Home tab, Clipboard group)
    3. Drag it across row 1 and row 2 cells for all columns (or the range you want to merge) 

    This will merge B1 & B2, C1 & C2 and so on.

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-07-12T08:12:04+00:00

    Thanks for the feeback...

    You can try the following alternative

    1. Merge A1 & A2
    2. Copy the merged cell
    3. Select B1 & B2
    4. Press CTRL-SHIFT-Right Arrow Key together to select all the columns to the right
    5. Press CTRL-V

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-07-13T07:30:45+00:00

    That works wonderfully as well. Thanks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-07-12T05:05:13+00:00

    Actually, that works great. Thanks.

    For spreadsheets that are really wide this might still be time consuming (having to click and drag all the way across), but still much faster than what I was doing before!

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