How Do I Link to Cells That Move in an Excel Spreadsheet?

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application that is a part of the Microsoft Office software package and allows users to create a range of data to perform calculations and display various charts and graphs. Text or words can by typed or inserted in any of the cells in the spreadsheet and then edited to your preferences. When inputting data into your Excel spreadsheet, some cells may not link together or move inadvertently. You can fix this problem easily by merging the cells you want together so that they can’t be split apart.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Excel 2003
• Microsoft Excel 2007

Instructions

Merge Cells in Excel 2003

1. Open the Excel 2003 document that contains the cells that you want to link together. Highlight the cell that you want to keep together and stop from moving. You must make sure that the data is in the upper-left cell of a range of the selected sells to merge them together.

2. Click on the “Copy” option from the “Standard” toolbar menu, then click on the upper-left cell that is part of the range of cells you want to merge. Click on the “Paste” option.

3. Select the cells that you want to link together again. Go to the “Formatting” tool bar and click on the “Merge and Center” option. The cells will then be automatically linked together.

4. Change the text alignment in the merged cells by clicking on the “Align Left” or the “Alight Right” option from the “Formatting” tool bar menu.

5. Click on the merged cells and then click on the “Merge and Center” option at any time to split the merged cells. The data will still appear in the upper-left cell of the range.

Merge Cells in Excel 2007

1. Open the Excel 2007 that contains the cells that you want to link. Make sure that data you want to show is in the upper-left corner of the data range.

2. Click on the “Home” tab and then click on the “Merge and Center” option from the “Alignment Group.” The cells will then be automatically centered and linked.

3. Merge the cells without centering by clicking on the “Merge Across” or “Merge Cells” option from the “Alignment Group.” Click on the “Alignment” buttons in the “Alignment Group” section to change the alignment of the data in the cells.

4. Click on the “Merge and Center” button in the “Alignment Group” area at any time to split the linked cell back to the way it was before.

References

• Microsoft Office: Merge or Split Cells or Cell Contents for Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office: Merge or Split Cells or Cell Contents for Excel 2003