‘Center text and merge cells in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel’

Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel are the two leading programs that are used for data entry for personal and for business purposes. Both the programs have pretty similar features to help their users ease their daily working with the data they enter. However, the processes, the tabs and other methods to access these functions might be slightly different if compared with one another. For instance, if you want to merge a few cells together and want the text to be centralized for these merged cells, the steps are slightly different for both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.

Let’s learn how to merge cells on both the softwares.

How to Merge Cells on Google Sheets

1. Open your Google Sheets. You can always start from scratch, or even work on an already existing file as the functions or features for this can be implemented on the cells even if they have data in them.

2. When you need to merge cells, it does not necessarily have to be the first rows or columns. Anybody can find the need to merge any cells anywhere on the sheets. As an example, I used the first row to type the heading, that is, Google Sheets, and let the rest of the cells be empty. There are two ways to go about this. You either type down the heading in the first cell out of all the cells that you want to merge or, you can merge all the cells first and then add the heading to the merged cells. Either way, you will have to adjust the center for the heading in Google Sheets.

I wrote the heading first and then merged my cells. So for this, I selected all the cells after typing in the heading.

3. On the top toolbar for Google Sheets, you will find a tab for merge which looks something like two square brackets and arrows in the center. Look at the image below to know what exactly the tab for Merge cells looks like on Google Sheets.

4. Click on the downward facing arrow on this tab to see more options for merge cells.

Click on the option as per your requirements. I clicked on Merge all. Even if I clicked the option for ‘merge horizontally’, I would have received the same output because I had selected only rows for merging.

5. Clicking on one of these options will instantly merge the cells. However, the text in the cell will not align to the center automatically.

6. To align to center, the text in the merged cells on Google Sheets, select the merged cells. And click on the tab which is right next to the merge cells tab.

   

This will show you three options for alignment. To center any text on sheets, you will click on the one that is in the center.

7. The text has been aligned to the center successfully.

   

How to Merge Cells on Microsoft Excel

1. Open an Excel Sheet with or without data. Most of the functions and actions can be implemented even if there is no data on the sheet. Same goes for merging cells.

2. I wrote the heading in the first cell. You can either write the heading first, and then merge the cells, or merge the cells first and then type in the heading. This is totally up to you. You will be able to merge the cells either way so it doesn’t really matter. Now to merge the cells, I selected all the cells that I wanted to merge.

   

3. In the top tools ribbon on Excel, notice the tab for Merge and Centre. It is easier to locate the tab for Excel as it is in a written form and not just a symbol.

4. Click on the downward facing arrow on this tab, which will show you more options for merge and center for cells.

5. The instant you click on any of the options as displayed in the previous image, the selected cells will merge and the text will get center automatically. You will not have to center the text manually for this.

6. You can always unmerge the cells from the same Merge and Centre tab.