Get rid of merged cells! Debate

[Joe4]

Joe,
No (I hate them), but I shared a room at school with a guy who was a Rush fanatic, so it may have seeped into my consciousness over time!

Well, I almost liked you Rory!
Sounds like you roommate was a pretty cool guy, though...

 

[RoryA]

We shared a taste for Whitesnake, Metallica, Twisted Sister and Slayer, but I just didn't get Rush, I'm afraid!

 

[Joe4]

Its kind of funny. I had a few roommates in college that turned me off/on to music also.

My first roommate had a "shrine" to the Doors, but played the same 3 CDs over and over again. As such, I really can't stand the Doors.

My second roommate introduced me to Rush (I had never listened to them before then). I now own almost every album and have seen them in concert about 7 times (they are great in concert - it is amazing that it is only 3 guys making that music live).

BTW, Whitesnake is my favorite 80s hair-band (and I am not afraid to admit it!).

 

[RoryA]

I love the Doors - have all their albums plus various bootlegs etc. For 80's hair, you can't beat a Flock of Seagulls though. (early Bon Jovi is quite impressive to be fair, as is Poison).

 

[cgmojoco]

There is another reason to use merged cells that may be quite obvious but sofar left unsaid:
MY BOSS LIKES THEM

Yes, this has made programming a nightmare (I've learned way more than I would have liked on how to get around merged cells).

Although, interestingly, now that I know a bit more how to navigate around them, I've found that I prefer them whenever distibuting files that I am requesting someone put notes into....(i.e. to summarize groups of rows of data...)

if there was a way to center across selection vertically, that would be interesting...

I've tried workarounds, I find the merged cells are the only option to get the wrapping and grouping of vertical data that I need...

Surprise, in one instance, I actually found it EASIER to script against merged cells rather than center across.

 

[Lewiy]

Here’s another “benefit”…..merged cells allow you to have more visible characters in the cell. Why anyone would ever be using Excel for something that requires 1024 characters in on place is beyond me and never something I’ve done myself, but rather than tell these people to stop being stupid and use Word, I just tell them to merge two cells together, thus allowing them to view everything they have typed in.

 

[Legacy 96851]

Here’s another “benefit”…..merged cells allow you to have more visible characters in the cell. Why anyone would ever be using Excel for something that requires 1024 characters in on place is beyond me and never something I’ve done myself, but rather than tell these people to stop being stupid and use Word, I just tell them to merge two cells together, thus allowing them to view everything they have typed in.

Ha, that was actually an issue I had a few weeks ago, where I had a bunch of cells with paragraphs in them (it made a little bit of sense in Excel vs. Word, because the text was broken up a bit and was pertinent to the rest of the sheets, which were graphs/charts).

But merge cells have their own issue there which was driving me insane: they have some restriction (maybe based on the widths of the component cells?) as to the amount of words allowed on the last line of text- if there aren't a certain number of characters on that line, the text just gets cut off. With about 10 cells arranged vertically, finding "just the right length" so none had this problem was quite a pain.

p.s. Rush is the greatest band in history

 

[Lewiy]

Actually, I’m quite curious about this sort of thing because “officially” only 1024 characters will display in a cell, but if you use the following formula:
=REPT("A",1024)&REPT("B",50)&REPT("C",50)&REPT("D",50)&REPT("E",50)&REPT("F",50)&REPT("G",50)&REPT("H",50)&REPT("I",50)
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o> </o>
You can clearly see that there are more than 1024 characters displayed in the cell.
<o> </o>
In fact if you wrap text and increase the column width to the maximum 255, you can see 1421 characters which is way more than the quoted limit.
<o> </o>
Even copy and pasting values so that the characters are physically present in the cell makes no difference!!

 

[Greg Truby]

Realize this thread has cooled off somewhat. Been a busy week and just haven't had time to mention this until today...

The board software automatically removes two (or more) spaces. Even if Emma or Lewiy wanted to put two spaces after a period (or "full stop" if you insist), the board will trim it to one. Both the red and blue below have the exact same spacing. The red is posted normally. The blue uses the HTML

<pre> and </pre>

tags to preserve spacing.

<b>spacing test</b>
1 and 1
2 and 2
3 and 3
4 and 4
5 and 5
<pre><b>spacing test</b>
1 and 1
2 and 2
3 and 3
4 and 4
5 and 5</pre>

 

[Lewiy]

So basically, the board prevents us from using the correct spacing after a full stop......I'm gonna have to make a formal complaint. These language/typing rules exist to help us understand each other dammit