Merging cells in a spreadsheet is useful when you are formatting data and have a section where you need to display information across many cells. But it can also cause a bit of a headache when you are sorting and moving data, and you may find yourself with some merged cells that no longer need to be merged. Luckily you can unmerge cells in Google Sheets in a manner similar to how those cells were merged in the first place. Our guide below will show you how to select a group of cells in your spreadsheet that has been merged, then perform an action on those cells to unmerge them.
How to Undo Cell Merge in Google Sheets
Our guide continues below with additional information on unmerging cells in Google Sheets, including pictures of these steps.
Can I Unmerge Cells in Google Sheets? (Guide with Pictures)
The steps in this article were performed in the desktop version of the Google Chrome Web browser, but will also work in other desktop browsers like Edge or Firefox.
Step 1: Sign in to your Google Drive at https://drive.google.com and open the Sheets file containing the cells to unmerge.
Step 2: Select the cells that you wish to unmerge.
Note that you can select multiple cells, but they must be adjacent. You can even select unmerged cells and unmerge them, it just won’t change anything.
Step 3: Click the Select merge type button, then choose the Unmerge option.
Note that the dropdown menu will only appear if you click the down arrow next to the button. Sheets will automatically unmerge your merged cells if you click the Merge cells button. You won’t be able to select Unmerge unless you have selected at least one merged cell. Our tutorial continues below with additional discussion on working with merged cells in Google Sheets.
How to Unmerge All Cells in Google Sheets
If your spreadsheet contains a lot of merged cells and you don’t want to go through the process of manually selecting all of them, then you might be looking for a quick way to perform an unmerge for all of them. You can unmerge all of the cells in a Google spreadsheet by clicking the gray button above the row 1 heading and to the left of the column A heading to select the whole worksheet, then click the Merge button and choose the Unmerge option. You can also select all of the cells in a spreadsheet with the Ctrl + A keyboard shortcut. Using this shortcut to select all the cells in your worksheet is useful to know as it has applications other than merging or unmerging cells. You can also use it as a quick way to copy a lot of data or apply the same formatting option to an entire sheet at once.
More Information on How to Merge and Unmerge Cells in a Google Spreadsheet
If you are trying to merge cells in Google Sheets and you click the Merge icon, rather than clicking the arrow next to the Merge button, then Google Sheets may not perform the type of merge that you want. The merge options that appear on that dropdown menu are:
Merge allMerge verticallyMerge horizontallyUnmerge
The Merge button will be grayed out unless you have at least two cells selected and you won’t be able to access the merge menu until you choose at least two or more individual cells, or one merged cell. You can also merge selected cells by clicking the Format tab at the top of the window, choosing the Merge cells option, then selecting the desired type of merge. A quick way that you can unmerge cells and remove all of the formatting applied to those cells is to use the Clear formatting option at the bottom of the Format tab at the top of the window. You can also perform this action with the Ctrl + \ keyboard shortcut. Note that if you have your entire Google Sheet selected then using the “Clear formatting” command will remove all of the formattings that you have applied to every cell in your worksheet. Curious about the options that you have for merging cells in Google Apps, including Google Docs? Find out more about merging cells in Google Sheets and Google Docs.
See also
How to merge cells in Google SheetsHow to wrap text in Google SheetsHow to alphabetize in Google SheetsHow to subtract in Google SheetsHow to change row height in Google Sheets
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites. His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well. Read his full bio here.
