So, what happened here is that Excel merged the two cells together instead of the cell values. Step 5: Once we click on “OK”, we shall get the following result Step 3: The moment we click on “Merge & Center”, we get a dialogue box pop up showing a warning, mentioning that only the left-hand value would be considered, and the right-hand value would be discarded. Step 2: We will click on the “Merge & Center” option on the Home ribbon next. In this scenario, we shall select cells A2 and B2. Step 1: We will need to select the cells that we wish to merge together.
![merging cells in excel 2000 merging cells in excel 2000](https://www.techonthenet.com/excel/cells/images/align_top002.png)
If we wish to merge the contents of “First Name” and “Last Name”, then this method fails as it takes only the left-hand value, completely overwriting the right-hand values. We have a list where the first column (A) contains the first names and the second column (B) has the last names. Let us look at an example to get a better understanding of this drawback.
![merging cells in excel 2000 merging cells in excel 2000](https://basicexceltutorial.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Pasted-52.png)
If we have some data in cells A1 and B1, using this form of merging would result in the retention of the left-hand value and the overwriting of the right-hand value.
![merging cells in excel 2000 merging cells in excel 2000](https://cdn.ablebits.com/_img-blog/merge-cells/merge-cells-excel.png)
There is, however, a drawback with this method of merging. Perhaps the most used and one of the simplest ways to achieve this using the “Merge & Center” option available in the Home ribbon. Merging essentially means having the combined values of multiple cells in one. Excel functions, formula, charts, formatting creating excel dashboard & others Merge Cells in Excel Using Merge & Center Option