I Will Sometimes Merge a Cell to Create a Really Wide Sparkline

March 03, 2018 - by Bill Jelen

Merged cells in Excel are evil. You should never merge a cell. The Center Across Selection option will give you the same look without the evil of merged cells. Saturday confession: I merge cells to create really long sparklines.

Sparklines were introduced in Excel 2010 and are cell-sized charge. Professor Edward Tufte coined the term in his book, Beautiful Evidence. The Win-Loss sparkline shows an up marker for a win and a down marker for a lose. It is great for seeing winning or losing streaks in a season.

For a long sports season, you will want to make the sparkline much wider. The sparkline has to be contained within a single cell. One quick solution is to select A2:D2 and merge those cells. Make the row height twice as high and you have a nice looking sparkline.

Another tip: I inserted some blank rows between the pre-season and regular season and the regular season and the playoffs. Now, at a glance, you can see the Eagles were 2-2 in the pre-season, 13-3 in the regular season, and, of course, 3-0 in post-season play.

After writing this much of the article, I am feeling guilty about merging cells, even for this use. There is another way to go.

1. Create the sparkline off to the side, perhaps in cell O2.
2. Make O2 really wide so the sparkline looks good
3. Select O2 and Ctrl + C to copy
4. Select cell G2. Open the Paste Dropdown and choose Paste Linked Picture.

The result is a sparkline that appears to span many columns without merging the cells.

Every Saturday, an admission of guilt. I will reveal my bad habits in Excel and discuss why you should do what I say instead of do what I do.

Title Photo: Markus Spiske / Unsplash