Press the Enter key to cancel the Edit mode, and then try to merge cells.

If the Merge and Center button is greyed out, most likely the selected cells are in Edit mode.

If you are looking to combine two or more cells with data in them, check out How to merge cells without losing data.

Make sure that all the data you want to include in a merged cell is entered in the left-most cell of the selected range because only the content of the upper-left cell will survive after merging, data in all other cells will be deleted.

When using Excel's built-in features to combine cells, there are a few things to keep in mind: Excel's merging features - limitations and specificities To change the text alignment after merging, simply select the merged cell and click the desired alignment in the Alignment group on the Home tab. Once you click Merge and Center, the selected cells will be combined into one cell and the text is centered like in the following screenshot:

In this example, we have a list of fruits in cell A1 and we want to merge it with a couple of empty cells to the right (B2 and C2) to create a large cell that fits the entire list.

On the Home tab > Alignment group, click the Merge & Center.

Select the contiguous cells you want to combine.

The whole process takes only 2 quick steps: The fastest and easiest way to combine two or more cells in Excel is to use the built-in Merge and Center option.

Merge two or more cells without losing dataĬombine cells using Excel's Merge and Center feature.

And further on in this tutorial, you will find a few solutions that work in all versions of Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010 and lower. If at least two cells you are trying to join contain data, the standard Excel Merge Cells feature will only keep the upper-left cell value and discard values in other cells.īut is there a way to merge cells in Excel without losing data? Of course there is. Whatever the reason, combining cells in Excel is not as straightforward as it may seem. In other cases, there may be too much content to be displayed in one cell, and you decide to merge it with adjacent blank cells.

For example, you may want to combine several cells for a better data presentation or structure. In your Excel worksheets, you may often need to merge two or more cells into one large cell. The tutorial demonstrates different techniques to quickly merge two cells in Excel and combine multiple cells row by row or column by column without losing data in Excel 365, Excel 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010 and lower.

Merge and center in excel is grayed out