How to Merge Cells in Google Sheets

Google Sheets allows you to merge multiple cells into a single combined cell. It allows you to merge cells vertically in rows, horizontally in columns, and rows and columns together.

Users generally require to merge the cells to create a common title for the multiple cells but there could be more reasons to do that.

In this tutorial, you will get to know how to merge two or more cells into a single cell.

Merge Cells Using the Format Tab

• First, select the cells, that you want to merge, and then go to the “Format” tab and click on the “Merge cells” option.
• After that, click on “Merge vertically” in this case, as selected cells are in the multiple rows of a column.

• Here, it will pop-up a warning message that the value within selected cells will get lost and preserve only the top-left most value within the merged cell.
• Now, click “OK” and the cells will get merged into a single vertical combined cell.

 Merge Cells Using the Merge Icon on the Toolbar

• First, select the cells, that you want to merge and then click on the “Merge icon” drop-down arrow and then click on “Merge horizontally”.

• Here, it will pop-up a warning message that the value within selected cells will get lost and preserve only the top-left most value within the merged cell.
• Now, click “OK” and the cells will get merged into a single vertical combined cell.

• At this point, your selected cells got converted into a merged cell.

Merge Cells Using the Keyboard Shortcut

There is no direct shortcut to merge the cells in Google Sheets, but yet you use the combination of keywords as a shortcut for the same.

Shift + Alt → O → M

• First, select the cells you want to merge.
• After that, press and hold the “Shift and Alt” keys and then press “O” and then “M” and it will open the “Merge option”.
• Now, using the upwards and downward keys, highlight the “Merge” option and press enter.

Merge Cells for Android or IOS Mobiles

• First, go to the cell and then tap on the little blue circle at the below right corner and drag it to select the other cells.
• Once selected, click on the “Merge” icon on the below toolbar.

• Here, it will prompt the warning message that “Merging cells will only preserve only the value of top-left most cell”.
• Now, click OK on it and the selected cells will get merged into a cell.

Merge Cells on Mac

There is no such difference in using Google Sheets in Mac and Windows systems. You will find all the feature icons located at same place. The only difference you will find is the shortcut keys.

• First, select the cells you want to merge.
• After that, go to the toolbar and click on the merge icon drop-down arrow and choose the way you want to merge the selected cells.

Merge Types in Google Sheets

Merge Vertically: Merge vertically merges the cells from multiple rows but within a single column.

Merge Horizontally: Merge horizontally merges the cells from multiple columns but of a single row.

Merge All: Sometimes, you want to merge the cells that consist of multiple rows and multiple columns, that time after selecting those cells, you should use the “Merge all” which merges them all into a single merged cell.

Points to Remember

• While merging the cells, if you have the value within the selected cells, it will get lost and replaced with the value of the top-leftmost cell.
• If you do not want to lose the data while merging the cells, better to combine the data of that cells into a single cell using the “TEXTJOIN” OR “CONCATENATE” function.
• In the Google Sheets mobile app, all the selected cells will only get converted into a single cell, there is no option to choose how to merge the cells i.e. Vertically or horizontally.