Merged cells won't alphabetize

[mykstor]

I've merged each group of 5 rows of Column B to make a larger text box. Other columns don't have merged rows.
There's a header row with titles for the columns that has an up-down arrow to alphabetize A-Z or Z-A or numerically.

When I try to use this feature, I get an error message:

"All merged cells must be the identical size for this feature to function."

I preset ALL rows on the sheet to the same height by selecting the entire page. When I spot-check row heights, they're all the same.
What gives? I spent a long time designing this thing, but without being able to alphabetize, it's useless.

I'm using Office for Mac 2011
HELP anyone? Thanks in advance.
Mike S.

 

[chuckchuckit]

Welcome to the board!

It is possible that the number of merged cells per column are not exactly the same number of cells for each column.

 

[Claymationator]

Welcome to the Board!

I am assuming that this may be an issue with Excel on a Mac as when I try this in Excel 2010 on my PC I am able to sort without any problem (even with merged cells.) Do the cells need to be merged in order for it to work?

 

[mole999]

I would suggest that you have column that doesn't include the merge at the same positions (hidden column ?)

 

[Peter_SSs]

Welcome to the MrExcel board!

I'm not familiar with Excel for Mac, but I suspect the arrow you are clicking to sort is trying to sort all columns in your table. However, from your description the 'rows' in the table are not all the same. A 'row' in column B is equivalent to 5 rows in column A for example.

If you happen to only want to sort column B without affecting the other columns then you should be able to select just that column and then choose a 'Custom Sort' through the normal menu and choose not to expand the selection to other columns.

 

[mykstor]

Thank you, all of you who have so far taken time to offer help.
One of the (many) things that bugs me to no end about Microsoft is the lousy quality of their official help and also the paucity of words used in their error messages.
So I'm grateful for a forum such as this.

I need to have each group of five merged cells be alphabetizable by the Column A arrows. The five rows to the right in Column B that aren't merged, don't need reordering among themselves as long as they all move with the same group of merged Column A cells.
OK.. A picture says a thousand words.
I just need to alphabetize by column A.
The five related rows in Column B just remain in whatever order as long as they move as a whole to stay with the correct set of merged cells in column A:

 

[shg]

I think you will require code that unmerges the cells, duplicates the contents down, sorts cols A and B by col A, and then remerges.

Excel doesn't like merged cells.

 

[mole999]

merge the column B and add hard carriage returns between each item (ALT+ENTER) well that the MS route, actually you then won't need merged cells as each will fit in a single row that is widened