This kind of thing can lead to big mistakes. This means if someone else picks up your spreadsheet, those might not know what you’ve done and take for granted that the formulas are all the same, when actually they are not. So if you have a column of formulas, you will only see the results of those formulas, and if any of those formulas are different to the others, you wouldn’t necessarily notice it straight away. If you’ve entered a formula in Excel it will show the result.
Hopefully that should have the desired effect, but with the problems. Select the alignment tab, and select from the dropdown as shown above. Highlight the cells in question, and bring up the Format Cells dialogue box (my preferred way is the keyboard shortcut CTRL+1): There are other reasons, but let’s focus on a decent alternative – Center Across Selection. They can’t be used in Table functionality introduced in Excel 2007. It affects keyboard shortcuts to select an entire column/row. You can’t drag down formulas through cells that are merged / unmerged differently. Why shouldn’t you merge cells? It plays havoc with sorting and filtering. Often when I get one of these, or inherit someone else’s spreadsheet I check for and remove all merged cells (check out number 2 on my top 5 keyboard shortcuts). It’s quite common when you export a report to Excel from another system that there are several merged cells at the top or bottom of the spreadsheet. There are rare occasions when merging cells are appropriate, and a data table is not one of them. You could even use data validation (more on that later) so that only dates can be entered. So, for columns that will contain dates, format them first (CTRL+1 for the Format Cells dialogue box then >Number>Date). In a large table you may not spot this and filter it out unintentionally. For example, when I type in “01012013” in general format, it converts it to date format, but shows “17 October 4670”, which is clearly not what I had in mind. Apart from the fact that lots of different date formats looks messy, it can cause problems if you want to sort or filter. If you haven’t set a specific date format, Excel will try to ‘guess’ what format you want by how you enter it. You want your number formatting to be consistent and correct – and notably this includes dates.Įxcel stores dates as numbers, but you can set the date format that it is shown in (41275 could be 1 January 2013, or or 1/1/13 etc etc). I’ll highlight every cell that’s not being used and Clear All (Alt+HEA in Excel 2007 or 2010). If I get a spreadsheet that’s moving at a snail’s pace, this is one of the first things I’ll check. It’s worth remembering this even if you don’t do it yourself. If you’re in the habit of formatting the entire row or column in something like bright yellow or bold to make it stand out, you’re jeopardising the speed of your worksheet. Don’t select an entire row or column when you change formatting Iv) You know that the cell is an intentional blank, not an accidental deletionĢ. Iii) If you apply autofilters when there is a blank row, you will probably cut off the section of your table below the blank row Ii) If you navigate around Excel using CTRL and the arrow keys, you will be stopped at each blank I) When you fill down a formula it will stop at the blank row, which may cause errors or at least slow you down Why not just leave them all blank? Several reasons:
And put the same thing every time so that if you try to sort or filter later you won’t have loads of different pointless values (like TBC, None, Pending, Unknown, Don’t know, etc etc). If you have a field that you don’t have data for, instead of leaving it blank, put something like “N/A” instead. So this is a list of the seven things that everyone who touches that spreadsheet should know: If the data is recorded incorrectly it can cause problems, and it only takes one person to spoil the fun for everyone. Whether it’s recording addresses and phone numbers of leads in a sales team, or updating a new starter list in HR, putting stuff into Excel is a very common task. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have been in any number of jobs that require you to do some data entry in Excel from time to time. They’re tips/habits that I’ve developed over the years but haven’t thought much about … until now. There are excellent tips in this post and it’s great to see them summarized in this way. XLCalibre is a UK-based site that focuses on Excel use by & for Human Resources professionals. If you share spreadsheets in a team, the data will only be as strong as the weakest link in the team.
#How do you merge cells in excel and keep all data how to
This post will describe bad habits in Excel to do with cell formatting and formulas and how to avoid them.
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