MERGING CELLS IN WORD 2002

[Jim]

I have tables that contain three columns and many rows.
I would like to merge the contents of the first two
columns into a single column while keeping the same
number of rows. I had no problem doing this in Word 6
using the 'merge cells' command, but Word 2002 merges all
of the contents into a single cell. I find it hard to
believe that there is no option for merging horizontal
contents only, but I can't seem to locate where this
obviously useful option is. Any suggestions would be
appreciated.

Jim

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You are not alone in wondering what the heck happened here. Heaven only
knows why the Word developers felt compelled to completely ruin a system
that worked perfectly well, but they did, beginning in Word 2000.

Unfortunately, there is no way you can merge columns the old way with a
command. But it can still be done, though it's a bit fiddly. This is one of
the things that the Tables and Borders toolbar is useful for (and there
aren't many). Although we don't recommend using the pencil tool to draw
tables, the eraser tool can be very useful, and this is one of the things
it's useful for. If you use the eraser to carefully erase the "line" between
the columns, you'll find that the cells in each row are merged, but the rows
are not.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP - DELETE UPPERCASE CHARACT]

The following code in a macro will merge the contents of the first two
columns while retaining the row separations:

Dim Cell1 As Range, Cell2 As Range, i As Long, mcell As Range
For i = 1 To ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Rows.Count
Set Cell1 = ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Cell(i, 1).Range
Set mcell = Cell1.Duplicate 'ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Cell(i,
1).Range.Duplicate
Cell1.End = Cell1.End - 1
Set Cell2 = ActiveDocument.Tables(1).Cell(i, 2).Range
mcell.End = Cell2.End
Cell2.End = Cell2.End - 1
mcell.Cells.Merge
mcell = Cell1 & " " & Cell2
Next i


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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP