copying 2 cells then combining them in a separate cell

[jwGary]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

know how to do this the simple way, but how can you do it so that you delete the old cells but still have the new, combined cell with the value intact. how do you do this with letters instead of numbers.

like combining one cell containing a first name and a second cell containing a last name, then deleting the original 2 cells and have a third with the first and last name. i did this a long time ago and i forgot how to do this over again. if i remember correctly, you had to do something with paste special

 

[CyberTaz]

I have no idea what you believe you remember, but I know of no default
operation that will do so. Quite honestly, my main concern has always been
trying to extract individual data items into separate cells rather than lump
stuff *into* single cells, so I may never have had any reason to look for
such a procedure in prior versions. I don't see anything of the sort in 2004
or 2008, however.

You can select & cut/copy multiple cells, select the destination cell then
paste into the formula bar or double-click the target cell then paste into
it. All content from the cut/copied cells will paste into the cell you're
editing. However, regardless of whether you cut or copy, the content of the
original cells will not be removed.

The reason being that when you cut/copy cells you're doing just that -
cutting/copying the *cells* - but you can't paste multiple cells into one.
Normal pasting causes the existing cells in the target area to be replaced
by the cells being pasted. The methods I described permit pasting of the
copied *content* rather than pasting the cells, themselves.

It's possible that you may have had a macro for such a purpose. Such a macro
would still work in 2004, but 2008 doesn't support VBA. Whether that could
be done with Apple Script I don't know.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac