Copying and Keeping Merged Cells

philb99

Active Member
Joined
Feb 3, 2014
Messages
385
Office Version
  1. 2010
Platform
  1. Windows
Hi - I am trying to copy spreadsheet contents which has Formatting / Colours and Merged Cells

The issue I have is that I can not seem to copy the data without the Cells becoming un-merged.

I am using Paste Special, and achieve everything else - any help greatly appreciated
 

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Many thanks - but I have to maintain the Merged Cells for reporting up the line
 
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Hi - I am trying to copy spreadsheet contents which has Formatting / Colours and Merged Cells


The issue I have is that I can not seem to copy the data without the Cells becoming un-merged.


I am using Paste Special, and achieve everything else - any help greatly appreciated


You'd need to do a Paste Special + Formats in order to keep the merged cells. (Or, of course, just a standard Paste.)

Question: are you doing this manually? Or through VBA?


Merged cells are notoriously problematic, and cause issues with lots of things, like sorting, copying, VBA, etc.
If you have the ability to, I would HIGHLY recommend replacing the merged cells with "Center Across Selection"


AMEN! Whenever I teach Excel seminars, I refer to merged cells as "demonic possession of your worksheet". They are, as a general rule, bad voodoo. Sometimes they simply cannot be avoided. But in the majority of cases you can usually find a work-around to avoid putting your spreadsheet's soul in such grave peril.
 
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Many thanks - but I have to maintain the Merged Cells for reporting up the line
But why?

If it is just for looks, and if it is merging across columns (and not down rows), that technique described in that link will give you the EXACT same visual effect (it will look exactly the same), without all of the issues that merged cells bring.

So if it just for looks, I really cannot think of any plausible reason why the merged cells would need to be kept.
 
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Thanks Greg - Manual and I did use Paste Special / Formats - how strange
 
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So if it just for looks, I really cannot think of any plausible reason why the merged cells would need to be kept.


It may not be just for looks. Perhaps other workbooks link to specific ranges or perhaps VBA is expecting a specific structure downstream.


And, even in the case of "just for looks", I have made Excel-based versions of legacy documents that were paper based forms designed many years ago (some of them things like Customs documents), so the document had to have the exact layout as the paper source document in order for users to accept the Excel version. No idea if that's the case here, but maybe a similar reason that Phil's hands are tied.


(Or maybe it's a coversheet for a TPS report -- we all know how important those are. ;) )
 
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