You can find lots of techniques to achieve the alternate shading effect in Excel. Most of them involve some sort of conditional formatting trick.
About a year ago, someone from one of my workshops taught me a trick to quickly apply alternate shading without a lot of hassle.
I’m a pretty lazy guy, so I naturally got excited.
» More: Lazy Alternate Shading
Any self-respecting Excel expert will tell you that the ‘Merge and Center’ functionality is an abomination. The only benefit I can think of is the justification you can offer when you launch your office shooting spree.
“It was that message again” (eye twitching). “Can not change that part of merged cells” . Your temporary insanity plea will go right through.
A better option is to apply the ‘Center Across Selection’ formatting option. Center Across Selection essentially gives the same visual effect as ‘Merge & Center’, but without actually merging the cells.
