1 00:00:02,980 --> 00:00:07,410 Now let's take a look at a formatting option that's better than merge. 2 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:10,130 Now you might ask what's wrong with merge. 3 00:00:10,140 --> 00:00:12,510 Why do we need something that's better? 4 00:00:12,510 --> 00:00:14,730 Well, there is no problem with merge 5 00:00:14,760 --> 00:00:21,810 if you use it as your report headers and in places where you don't need to add formulas. But using merge 6 00:00:21,870 --> 00:00:25,850 and center is going to cause problems when you write formulas. 7 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:29,940 Here I have the salary information for three different divisions. 8 00:00:29,940 --> 00:00:33,690 Let's say I wanted to get the total salary right here. 9 00:00:33,690 --> 00:00:36,390 I have nothing merged inside this data set. 10 00:00:36,390 --> 00:00:39,510 The only thing that's currently merged is the title here. 11 00:00:39,510 --> 00:00:42,310 So I'm just going to write the usual sum formula. 12 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:47,670 I'm going to reference this area, close bracket, press enter. 13 00:00:47,820 --> 00:00:51,370 That's my total salary for all three divisions. 14 00:00:51,390 --> 00:00:52,800 Easy, right? 15 00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:53,810 Not so easy 16 00:00:53,820 --> 00:00:56,890 if we had merged cell. So let me just remove this. 17 00:00:57,300 --> 00:01:04,200 Now let's go to productivity and let's merge this because this looks much more organized, much better. 18 00:01:04,200 --> 00:01:11,190 We can do the same for the other ones but let's just do it for productivity. And let's go back to writing 19 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:14,580 our formula. Now check what happens. 20 00:01:14,790 --> 00:01:22,140 I can't select column C. So the moment it comes to here, this expands. The work around for this is to 21 00:01:22,140 --> 00:01:31,230 actually type the formula in. So this would be C6 till C43, close bracket, press enter. 22 00:01:31,230 --> 00:01:33,090 Which can be a pain to do. 23 00:01:33,150 --> 00:01:39,060 Then in addition to this being a pain you can also end up writing formulas that are wrong because you 24 00:01:39,060 --> 00:01:45,030 might not notice that there was a merged cell or a few merged cells in between your data and you ended 25 00:01:45,030 --> 00:01:48,200 up highlighting more than what you wanted. 26 00:01:48,210 --> 00:01:56,220 So if you need to merge cells you can do it using Center Across Selection. Because the advantage of using 27 00:01:56,220 --> 00:02:03,990 this instead of using merge is that you don't run into this problem when you write formulas. And the looks 28 00:02:03,990 --> 00:02:08,430 of your report is going to be identical as if you'd merged it. 29 00:02:08,460 --> 00:02:09,949 So let's see how we can set this up. 30 00:02:09,949 --> 00:02:13,580 So I'm just going to click this again to turn off merge. 31 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:17,640 Now the first step to using center across selection is to highlight the area. 32 00:02:17,670 --> 00:02:22,680 So basically the same step you would do before you click on merge. Instead of click on merge, 33 00:02:22,680 --> 00:02:30,810 we're going to right mouse click, go to format cells, or use the shortcut key Control+1. Go to alignment, from 34 00:02:30,810 --> 00:02:38,000 the text alignment options here, select Center Across Selection and click on OK. 35 00:02:38,070 --> 00:02:43,830 Exact same effect but check what the difference is, each cell is separate, 36 00:02:43,890 --> 00:02:51,480 nothing has been merged. The text that we see here is actually sitting in this cell. It just looks like 37 00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:55,080 it's sitting on top of these other two cells. 38 00:02:55,080 --> 00:03:02,970 So if you wanted to write this formula from scratch we can. Center cross selection is not going to give 39 00:03:02,970 --> 00:03:08,440 us any problems. Now we can apply this to the other headers as well. 40 00:03:08,580 --> 00:03:10,810 Just double click the former painter, 41 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:15,750 apply it to this one and apply to this one, escape to reset. 42 00:03:15,790 --> 00:03:22,830 OK, so whenever you come to merging cells and you think it might impact your formulas, use center across 43 00:03:22,830 --> 00:03:24,300 selection instead.