Forum Discussion
merge cells
ajl_ahmed a spreadsheet (in cell) formula can NOT affect the value or format of any other cell on the sheet, it will ONLY display the resulting value in the cell with the formula in it. To change other cells or formatting dynamically you would need a macro (VBA). That said, you can do quite a bit using cell formulas that would be equivalent or similar if you describe what you need a little more. For example what do you mean by "merge"? Do you mean the actual merge functionality where those cells are all merged into a single cell so you can't click them individually or do you mean you want all the text/values to be "merged" (concatenated) into a single cell. For example, you COULD hide columns D-H and insert 5 new columns next to them so the old column I is now column N so then in column I have a formula like =IF(N9="Suspended", CONCATENATE(H9:D9), H9) and then column J has formula like =IF($N9="Suspended", "", I9) and then copy right into columns K,L,M
If you prefer you could use TEXTJOIN to add a space or comma or something between cells.
see example in the attached.