Spreadsheet will not sort

[Guest]

I've been manipulation data in a 2500 line speadsheet for about two weeks.
At some point, I copied an entire column, put it into Word, and deleted and
reformatted the infor in the cells in that one column. The data (this column
was actually first and last names) was then pasted back into the original
worksheet I need to sort the spreadsheet using various columns, but Excel
will not allow a sort, I receive a box which states "This operation requires
that merged cells be identically sized" I've sized the spreadsheet several
times and both the height and width of all cells are identical, but it still
gives me this message. Any idea of that I might be able to do?

 

[vezerid]

Katie,
it seems to me that what you did in Word resulted in cell merge. The
message about the sizes refers to the number of cells merged not the
column width, which I suspect is what you are trying to play with.

Not knowing how the original data was and how you processed it in Word
I don';t know how hard the re-processing task is. Maybe you would want
to email the file at
vezerid at act dot edu

Kostis Vezerides

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your assistance. I suspect that you are correct in that the
manipulation done in Word is responsible. All I really did was to get rid of
extraneous infomration, leaving just a first and last name. I them put the
first name is one colunm and the last name in another. Then pasted both
columns back into WORD. I really appreciate you offer of assistance, but I
am unable to email you the document.

 

[vezerid]

If your Excel data contain only first/last name then the formulas I
suggest might help you. The idea is that in some rows first and last
name will be separated into two cells but in some other rows they might
have been merged. If you identify such rows, then perform the
following, in order to break these data into two columns in all cases
(always assuming your data is only two words, they occupy columns A:B
and they start from A2).

In D2:
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ", TRIM(A2)), LEFT(A2,FIND(" ", A2)), A2)
In E2:
=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(" ", TRIM(A2)), MID(A2, FIND(" ",A2)+1, LEN(A2)), B2)

Copy down and let us know if it works. You should be able to sort
columns D:E w/o any problem.

HTH
Kostis Vezerides

 

[Guest]

I found the following poet on the Excel general question board, and it worked
perfectly. I hope it now works with my mail merge.

Unmerge* your cells and use "CenterAcrossSelection" instead. <Format>
<Cells> <Alignment> tab, *Uncheck* "Merge Cells", Expand the "Horizontal"
window, And choose the last option. -- HTH,

Thanks for your help.