Don't merge cells in Excel! Center across selection instead

The Merge & Center feature/button in Excel may be useful in terms of formatting, but will cause all sorts of problems when trying to build formulas.

Instead, use the lesser-known Center Across Selection feature, which produces results that *look* exactly the same as merged cells, but without any of the drawbacks.

Additional Links:

Videos on using absolute, relative, and mixed references to build complex spreadsheets extremely quickly:

[_Error__Goodbye]

This just changed my entire life lol thanks for the video

[VickyMoore-sdkt]

Learned something new, I was not aware that you could use format cell "alignment" to center across the selection. Thank you!

[vilamouraalgarve]

​ @Dr. Engineering Can I ask if there is a trick to do this for long text? As I cannot use row height autofit for merged cells, this solves my problem but only partially. I would like to have long text (10-15 lines) to 1) autofit the row height but also be aligned on the left, not in the centre. Any tips/tricks for that?

[gauchopkg]

Thanks for the vid, but what if I want to align right or left across the selection?

[sueu.]

I merged 5 rows to type in a bit of text. Below this text, I want to make columns but now I can't size the columns without messing up the text above. Help!

[yellowyin]

awesome! can we do this on google sheets? Cuz i've been trying to find a way to filter data from merged cells, but it appears that google sheets does not have a lot of functions that excel by itself has :/

[abdelrahman]

is there away to do the same for vertical cells as most my work one vertical cell go to 2 cells to show type

[feliciagoh]

How about vertical? Any alternative way for row?

[yogibearstie]

I don’t find a way to add this to QAT.

[_AO_]

Not working for me. Doesnt do anything.