Left Align Across Selection

It's been a while since this has been asked (I did some extensive Googling), and I know I may be ridiculed for bringing it up, but has there been any light shed on the ability to align a selection of cells to the tune of left justification - something akin to center across selection, but instead left across selection.

Before you say that I could merge the cells and left align (which is contradicting what the general rule seems to be: never merge cells, which I agree with), I'd simply prefer not to.

The main intent here is to allow a cell to be centered across a selection and fit to text with a left justification since my form is constrained by many cells that overlap. If macros etc. could simply utilize a merged cell, then I'd be fine, but until then, I'd like to be able to shrink my text to fit within a more visually appealing box without having to merge cells.

Center across selection seems to simulate this just fine (and gives me results close to what I need), but it doesn't quite hit the point I'm looking for.

If there is any rumor of a new feature set in motion, or of a 'fix' for this situation, please feel free to share.

Thanks!

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[SOLVED]

Originally Posted by shg

No .

cant you use centre across selection,then justify left?

Originally Posted by martindwilson

cant you use centre across selection,then justify left?

That removes the center across selection's ability to fit text among adjacent cells.

For instance:

I'd like to fit text across A1:B:1. If I center across selection, it will fit the text to the width of the two cells up to my default font. What happens then is my columns (A:B) are a fixed width so smaller items that are fit and centered don't visually 'belong'.

think you need to show what you mean,this is centred then left justified

LeftJustified.jpg

I set the entire right two columns to center across selection (I can't change the column widths and positions). I also set these two columns to fit to text.
The first two red are left justified (as I'd like) and the third is center across selection (the text is consequently a bit smaller), but as you see the center across selection feature to fit the text among both cells is gone when left justified.

ah but the "never merge cells " sort of advice is only for when you are trying to do calculations from those cells or use sort or fill down a function. for purely cosmetic purposes as you have here merging probably isn't a bad idea

Originally Posted by martindwilson

ah but the "never merge cells " sort of advice is only for when you are trying to do calculations from those cells or use sort or fill down a function. for purely cosmetic purposes as you have here merging probably isn't a bad idea

Sorry, I felt I made my question too long in the first place (including background), so I didn't mention that there is in fact calculations going on in these cells. If that weren't the case then I'd merge it in an instant.

So not only are Excel direct functions taking place, but I have macros for these cells as well.

no idea then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha. Thanks anyway.

Then what is all the fuss that everyone has about using macros and merged cells? And I can't remember specifically, but I think when I was doing it before, it was for named ranges, etc. (and I have a lot of named ranges in my spreadsheet).

best thing is to try it and see if it impacts on your work book

After merging several cells (it's been a while since I've merged on this specific worksheet so I can't remember all the issues I had), my first macro-related issue came on the double-click event. Currently, I have a named range labeled ListBox. What it does is on a double-click for a cell within that range, if the cell is empty, it will be generated with the first index of the data validation list's value. Otherwise, it will turn blank.

With merged cells, nothing happens. My named range is still based on the furthest left value - I even added both cells (A2:B2 for example) to the range and it still does nothing. And I verified that the macro still works by testing it on another named range without the cells being merged.

I'm sure I'll come across more issues (like I did before), but I can't, for the life of me, remember what all those issues were.

Search the forum for merged cells to find a potpourri of issues caused by merged cells.

Originally Posted by shg

Search the forum for merged cells to find a potpourri of issues caused by merged cells.

Right, so back to my original question and intent on creating this thread:

Is there any way to simulate the effect of 'center across selection' and then use left justification in addition to that?

No .

Thank you for the informative response.