Odd error - "This operation requires merged cells..."

[Guest]

I'm cutting data from multiple sheets and pasting it into one, using Paste
Values. This has been going OK for a while, but then when I cut data from one
of the sheets, I get the error:

This operation requires the merged cells to be identically sized.

I have no idea what any of these terms mean. I don't know what "merged
cells" are in this context, nor can I figure out where such a thing may be. I
don't know what "identically sized" means, because I'm selecting a single
cell, which is typical for a paste operation. In fact, it's not even clear
what "this operation" is referring too, and I have a feeling it's not "paste".

Anyone know what this means and how to fix it? There's no help on it that I
can find.

Maury

 

[Guest]

When you have selected the text but before you do the copy, go into Format >
Cells > Alignment and uncheck the box that says "merge cells". Now copy it,
and go to paste it into the other book. Does that work?

 

[Guest]

When you have selected the text but before you do the copy, go into Format >
Cells > Alignment and uncheck the box that says "merge cells". Now copy it,
and go to paste it into the other book. Does that work?

Well I worked around it by cutting and pasting in sections instead, but this
sounds like it WOULD work.

What exactly is a "merged cell" anyway?

Maury

 

[Pete_UK]

You can join two or more adjacent cells together to form a "merged"
cell - they can be joined horizontally, vertically or both. For
example, highlight the cells A1:C2 on a blank worksheet then click
Format | Cells | Alignment (tab) and click Merge Cells near the bottom
of the panel. Notice what happens - these 6 cells will now appear as
one, giving you more room to enter data (particularly text) into.

When you were cutting/pasting your data, you may have had two cells
which were merged in the original sheet, and because you were just
selecting the top cell of the range you wanted to paste into, Excel
objected to this as not all the cells were of the same size.

Hope this helps.

Pete