How to Merge Rows in Excel (2 Easy Methods)

In Excel, situations may arise when you need to merge cells (rows and columns). Today we are going to show you merge rows in Excel. For this session, we are using Excel 2019, feel free to use yours.

First things first, let’s get to know about the dataset which is the base of our examples.

Here we have several books with the name of respective authors. Using this data we will merge the rows.

Note that, this is a basic table to keep things simple. In a practical scenario, you may encounter a much larger and complex dataset.

Practice Workbook

You are welcome to download the practice workbook from the link below.

Merge Rows in Excel

Here in our example dataset, you can see the authors’ names are repetitive. We will merge the rows containing the same author name.

1. Merge Rows Using the Merge & Center Option Group

Excel provides merge options itself for merging the rows. You will find the options in the Alignment section from the Home tab.

Let’s merge rows using these options.

I. Merge Rows Using Merge & Center

Among the merge options, Merge & Center is used frequently. And it will centralize the element.

Select the cells to be merged then click Merge & Center from the Merge options within the Alignment section in the Home tab.

Since both the rows have the element in them, Excel will trigger a warning like below

Here the context of our example demands the availability of only one value so we are pressing OK. If your scenario demands different, then play accordingly.

The cells (rows) are merged and the element will be in the center of the cell.

II. Merge Rows Using Merge Cells

Another merge option is Merge Cells. It merges the rows but doesn’t centralize the element of the cell. Let’s see with an example

Here we have selected the rows that contain Nick Pirog and clicked Merge Cells.

It will again show us a warning since the rows have values.

Click OK and we will find the merged rows.

Using any of these options let’s merge the next rows

You may wonder why we have skipped the Merge Across option, it’s because Merge Across only merges cells from columns.

2. Alternative Way of Merging

In the earlier section, we have seen different merge options in Excel to merge cells. There is an alternative way of merging rows.

First, select the cells you want to merge together. Then open the Format Cells dialog box (CTRL + 1 the shortcut key).

In the Alignment tab of this dialog box, check Merge Cells from the Text Control section. And click OK.

Again you will find the warning

Proceed with OK. You will find the merged row.

We can do the same for the rest of the rows for practice.

Conclusion

That’s all for today. We have listed several methods to merge rows in Excel. Hope you will find this helpful. Feel free to comment if anything seems difficult to understand. Let us know any other methods that we have missed here.