Paste merged cells on protected worksheet and keep pasted cells merged

All,

I have a worksheet in excel which requires that the column widths and various cells need to be locked to prevent changes and corrupting the sheet. Up until a recent update to Excel 365, Pasting a merged cell on a protected worksheet kept the cells merged. Now the cells unmerge when pasted. Is there a way to keep the cells merged when pasting? This is important for the users to be able to create cells large enough to show the numbers.

I allow merging in the spreadsheet through a vba merge function that can be called.

I have attached an example excel file.

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

I have copy the merged cells and paste without any problem, they stay merged.
Maybe you can first unlock the sheet with VBA and after paste back locked?

Gia