Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Apr 30, 2026

How can I find merged cells in a large spreadsheet?

The file has around 80,000 cells. When I tried a new sort, it said "To do this, all the merged cells need to be the same size". I use merged cells fairly often, but I can't remember where I did that...

excel

Olufemi7

Iron Contributor

Apr 30, 2026

HelloLindsayGraham,

Yes, you can find merged cells using Go To Special.

Select the entire sheet (Ctrl + A twice)
Go to Home > Find & Select > Go To Special
Select Merged Cells and click OK

Excel will highlight all merged cells in the sheet.

If that does not work, you can use VBA to identify them:

Sub FindMergedCells()
Dim c As Range
For Each c In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
If c.MergeCells Then c.Interior.Color = vbYellow
End If
Next c
End Sub

Run the macro and it will highlight all merged cells.

LindsayGraham

Copper Contributor

May 01, 2026

Thank you, Olufemi7. Go To Special brings up a list of 15 possibilities, but Merged Cells is not one of them. I'm using the current version [2603] of Excel in Microsoft 365 -- what version are you using?

'Find merged cells' in Help says Home > Find & Select > Find > Options > Format > Alignment > tick Merge Cells > OK > Find All, but that gives me the error message quoted above. Do you get the same result?

I'd like to try other possibilities before using VBA.