Microsoft Excel: How to Merge Cells

By default, the contents of a cell appear at the bottom of the cell, with numbers aligned to the right and text aligned to the left. If this doesn’t work for your spreadsheet, change it with Excel's alignment options.

Change Cell Alignment

1. Select the cell(s) you want to align.
2. To vertically align cells, click the vertical alignment button you want.
3. To horizontally align cells, click the horizontal alignment button you want.
   

Cell Alignment Buttons	Description
Top/Middle/Bottom Align	Vertically align cell contents to the top, middle, or bottom of the cell using these three buttons.
Left/Center/Right Align	Horizontally align cell contents to the left side, center, or right side of the cell using these three buttons.
Orientation	Align cell contents diagonally or vertically.
Decrease/Increase Indent	Increase or decrease the margin between the cell contents and the cell border with these two buttons.
Wrap Text	Make all cell contents visible by displaying them on multiple lines within the cell (this increases the row’s height).
Merge & Center	Select from a few options for merging cells together and centering cell contents within the merged cells.

Indent a Cell’s Contents

If you need to increase or decrease the margin between the cell contents and the cell border, use the indentation options.

1. Select the cell(s) you want to indent.
2. Click the Increase Indent or Decrease Indent button.
   

Wrap Text in a Cell

You can use the text wrap option to make all cell contents visible. If you wrap text in a cell, it increases the row height to display everything within the cell.

1. Select the cell(s).
2. Click the Wrap Text button.
   

Merge Cells

You can merge cells together to create a larger cell without changing the row or column size.

1. Select the cells you want to merge together.
2. Click the Merge list arrow.
3. Select a merge option.
   

The cells are merged together into a single cell. If there was text in multiple cells, only the value in the upper-left cell will remain.

Merge Option	Description
Merge & Center	Combine and center the contents of the selected cells into a single, larger cell.
Merge Across	Merge selected cells in the same row into a single cell.
Merge Cells	Merge the selected cells into one cell.

Split Merged Cells

If you have merged cells in a worksheet, they can always be unmerged.

1. Click the Merge list arrow.
2. Select Unmerge Cells.