To begin with, if you try and sort cells that have been merged, it will refuse to do so and show you an error that says – To do this, all the merged cells need to be of the same size. OHHH BUMMER! First of all, this warning does not specify that the issue is because of merged cells, but even if you know that there would be a huge task to unmerge these cells for sorting to work (especially if you have a huge data set). Don’t lose heart – there is a quick and easy way to find the merged cell in Excel. You can easily select all these cells and unmerge it, or highlight it, or remove it.
How to Find Merged Cells in Excel
You can use the Find and Replace feature to find merged cells in Excel. Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:
As you can see in the data above, cell A4 and A5 have been merged and cell A10 and A11 have been merged. Now, if you try to sort this dataset, you will get an error as shown below:
The only way to resolve this is to find these merged cells and unmerge it. Here are the steps to do it:
Select the cells in which you want to find the merged cells. Go to Home –> Editing –> Find & Select –> Replace (You can also use the keyboard shortcut – Control + H). It will open the Find and Replace dialogue box. In the Find and Replace dialogue box, click on the Options button. It will expand the dialogue box and show some additional options. In front of the “Find what” field, click on the Format button. It will open the Find Format dialogue box. In the Find Format dialogue box, select the Alignment tab and check the Merge Cells Option. Click OK. Click on Find All button. It will find all the cells that are merged and list it below the dialogue box. Select all the listed cells (select the first listing, press Shift and then select the last one. This will select all the listings at once). Go to the Home tab and click on the Merge & Center button. This will instantly unmerge all the cells.
Now you can sort the data as it would not have any merged cells. Instead of merging these cells, you can also delete it or highlight it. To do this, follow all the steps given above, and in the last step, instead of unmerging the cells, highlight it or delete it.
Using Find and Replace in Excel (4 Amazing Examples) CONCATENATE Excel Ranges (with or without separator) How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel. MS Help – Find Merged Cells in Excel. Remove Spaces in Excel Split Multiple Lines in a Cell
I was wondering – can’t you just select the entire sheet and unmerge if the idea it simply unmerge? I tried and it worked for me. Although, I reckon highlighting and deleting might require the approach described in this article. I came here looking for a way to unmerge cells but also populating those cells with information from the merged cells. Is there an easy way to accomplish that?
