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Diane van Niekerk's avatar
Diane van Niekerk
Copper Contributor
Oct 23, 2018

Sorting rows that contains both merged columns and non merged columns

Hello all,

 

I am trying to sort a selection of rows that contains both merged columns and non merged columns.  Excel gives me an error msg stating the merged cells must be the same size.   Is there a way to sort when there are merges involved?

 

I should also prob say, I am first using a filter to get certain rows of data, and then trying to sort the results, which then contained cells formatted to be merged, while others are not.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

 

 

  • Ed Hansberry's avatar
    Ed Hansberry
    Bronze Contributor

    No. You cannot filter or sort properly with merged cells. It also breaks tables, Insights, and Get & Transform Data.

     

    Remove all merges before doing that kind of operation. Most merges can be done away with and just use Center Across Selection, which would just center data across multiple cells, but not merge them.

    Merging cells is good for one thing. Making something look like a PDF form. It wreaks havoc though when trying to do any sort of analysis. I have a macro in my personal.xlsb workbook that automatically removes all merged cells for any workbooks I have to do work on.

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