How to remove cell groupings in excel

How to remove cell groupings in excel

Some ideas on how to remove cell groupings in Excel. The method used will depend on how the cells have been grouped in the first place.

Grouped Rows and Columns

If you spreadsheet looks like this (+ and -‘s on the side or top), then the grouping feature is on. To see (or hide) the rows or columns you can click the + (or -).

2_Group Ungroup View

To remove the groupings feature you need to highlight the rows (or columns) involved and go to the DATA ribbon and on the right hand side click on UNGROUP. Depending on how many groupings there are you may need to do this a few times.

Ungrouping cells (typically an unmerge)

A common method of grouping is merging a number of cells together to form one cell. This can cause problems when you try and copy and paste or move data around.

To unmerge,

  • click on the merged cells,
  • goto the Format Cells option (right click and Format cells),
  • goto the Alignment tab
  • untick the Merge Cells box

Changing Part of an Array

It sometime looks like cells have been grouped together because when you try and insert/ delete rows in between it says something like ‘You cannot change part of an array’. This means that somewhere in that row or column is a type of formula which is called an array formula. An example is the Transpose formula.

Array formula need to stay together and as a result you cannot ‘ungroup’  them as such. You would need to get an understanding of array formula to undo this.