Welcome to Excel Jet Consult blog post. In this tutorial, we want to learn how to use the rarely known tool in Excel which replaces the Merge & Center.
Over time, I have seen many Excel users deploying the Merge & Center tool to merge and center headings in couple of cells. This is not the best practice because it can cause problem when trying to adjust column width. As explained in my Excel bool, “Microsoft Excel for Professionals”, we can do something like merge and center without necessarily merging and centering out heading or title. The tool we need is called Center Across Selection.
In the caption below, we want to use Center Across Selection to center the Depreciation Schedule title to extend to cell K1
- Select cell A1:K1
- Execute CTRL + 1
- In the Format Cells dialogue box, click on Alignment tab
- In the Horizontal dropdown, select Center Across Selection
- Click OK
From the caption above, not only can we see that our heading is nicely located in the center of spreadsheet, we are able to select cells that is part of the center across selection. In the caption, we selected cell H1, which is not possible had it been we used the Merge & Center