This is done to minimize the risk of one of the cell references from disappearing How to Find out why Merge and Center is Greyed Out However, since Excel has to keep track of changes made by both users to a cell, it does not allow any user to merge cells while it is in shared mode. This is great because both users are working and editing in real-time and there’s no hassle of creating multiple copies of the same workbook. When you share a workbook you are allowing other users to access and make changes to your workbook concurrently. With the emphasis on remote collaboration, more and more people are making use of these collaboration facilities. Newer versions of Excel (from 2010 onwards) allow users to share workbooks. This could also cause the Merge and Center button to be deactivated. The workbook might be protected:įor the same reason as above, it is possible that the whole workbook itself is in Protected mode. This often includes disabling the Merge and Center button too. Putting a worksheet in protected mode usually allows the user to edit certain parts of the sheet, while most features are disabled to protect the data. This is usually done to prevent users from changing, moving, or deleting information from the sheet, either accidentally or deliberately.Īn Excel user can also protect a worksheet to disallow users from making selected changes to a sheet, like inserting columns, formatting rows, etc. Worksheets or workbooks downloaded from the internet are often in Protected mode. Here are three possible reasons your Merge and Center button might be greyed out: The worksheet might be protected: To solve the problem, it is important to first determine why it happened. In both cases, it can be awfully frustrating to find the button grayed out.
You might want to use the Merge and Center button to either merge a set of cells or unmerge an already merged set of cells.
Why is Merge and Center Grayed Out? – 3 Possible Reasons When you click on the arrow, you will see a number of merging options like: If you look in the Alignment group, you will see the Merge and Center button, along with a dropdown arrow. You will find the Merge and Center button in the ribbon under the Home tab. Where is the Merge and Center Button in Excel? You can use it to merge a set of cells into one and you can use the same button to unmerge a merged cell into separate cells. Therefore, the Merge and Center button lets you do both. If you want to unmerge the cell back to its original contents, you can simply click on the merged cell and click on the Merge and Center button again. The cells now get merged into one, with the contents centered across the merged cell.
The Merge and Center button is used to merge two or more consecutive cells together into one large cell.įor example, to merge the cells A1 to D1 in the worksheet shown below, you just need to highlight the cells and click on the merge and center button.īelow is what you will see when you merge these cells What does the Merge and Center Button do? What you Can use Instead of Merge and Center.Why it is better to Avoid using Merge and Center.How to Enable Merge and Center if Disabled.How to Find out why Merge and Center is Greyed Out.Why is Merge and Center Grayed Out? – 3 Possible Reasons.Where is the Merge and Center Button in Excel?.What does the Merge and Center Button do?.Once you’ve found the cause, we will also help you get it reactivated.įinally, we will demonstrate some alternatives to using Merge and Center because this button is often not the best way to center contents in cells. In this tutorial, we will help guide you in diagnosing what is causing your Merge and Center button to be grayed out (or deactivated). Well, lucky for you, we have some tips that might help get you out of this problem. Now, what if you select and highlight the cells you want to merge, but when you go to option to do it, you find that the Merge and Center button is grayed out? To bring together these similar column header cells, you might think of clicking the Merge and Center button, which makes sense. In this case, you would need to merge the headers for similar columns into one like this (colors have been added to help you see the grouping more clearly): Moreover, all four columns can be grouped under the theme of ‘School Results’. In the above image, columns A and B belong to the Primary section, while columns C and D belong to the Secondary section. To ensure a formatted and symmetrical look in our worksheets, we often need to merge a few cells together and center the contents of the merged cell.įor example, you might have two columns with the same theme, like the ones shown below:
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