Now we shall discuss the two best ways to merge cells in Excel. This is the main drawback of using the “Merge & Center” option. Due to this, we did get a merged cell, but we lost the “Last Name” in the process. So, what happened here is that Excel merged the two cells together instead of the cell values. Step 5: Once we click on “OK”, we shall get the following result Step 3: The moment we click on “Merge & Center”, we get a dialogue box pop up showing a warning, mentioning that only the left-hand value would be considered, and the right-hand value would be discarded. Step 2: We will click on the “Merge & Center” option on the Home ribbon next. In this scenario, we shall select cells A2 and B2. Step 1: We will need to select the cells that we wish to merge together.
![keystroke for merging cells in excel keystroke for merging cells in excel](https://cdn.extendoffice.com/images/stories/doc-excel/shortcut-to-merge-cells/doc-shortcut-to-merge-4.png)
If we wish to merge the contents of “First Name” and “Last Name”, then this method fails as it takes only the left-hand value, completely overwriting the right-hand values. We have a list where the first column (A) contains the first names and the second column (B) has the last names. Let us look at an example to get a better understanding of this drawback.
![keystroke for merging cells in excel keystroke for merging cells in excel](https://blog.gsmart.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/google-sheet-merge-cells-with-data.png)
If we have some data in cells A1 and B1, using this form of merging would result in the retention of the left-hand value and the overwriting of the right-hand value. There is, however, a drawback with this method of merging. Perhaps the most used and one of the simplest ways to achieve this using the “Merge & Center” option available in the Home ribbon. Merging essentially means having the combined values of multiple cells in one. Excel functions, formula, charts, formatting creating excel dashboard & others Merge Cells in Excel Using Merge & Center Option