You’ve probably seen the warnings (including from me):

“Never use merged cells!”

Is merging cells always bad?

Like many things in Excel, the answer isn’t so black and white.

There are situations where merging cells makes sense.

And others where it completely wrecks your spreadsheet’s functionality.

Here’s the simple rule I follow:

✔️ Top of the sheet for clean headers? Merge all you want.

❌ Middle of your data table? Absolutely not. (You can get the same effect with a smarter method... read on)

👉 In this blog post, I walk you through when it’s okay, how to clean up merges gone wrong, and the better alternatives to use in data-heavy areas (Center Across Selection to the rescue).

​

🤓 Geeky News

✂️ More precise recording with the Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool is testing the option to screen record a specific window.

Currently, you need to hand-select the area to record, which can be tricky - you either include too much or too little.

Soon, you'll select the window and record exactly what you need.

⚖️ LibreOffice Calc gets new functions

You know I'm a ride-or-die Excel geek, but sometimes you have to check in with the competition 😉

Calc, the spreadsheet app in the open source office suite LibreOffice, just got 14 new functions!

These include functions like VSTACK, TEXTSPLIT, CHOOSECOLS, WRAPROWS, TAKE, etc.

​Here, you can learn about their Excel counterparts.

It makes the two programs more compatible, which is excellent news if you're an Excel person sharing files with the Calc crowd (or vice versa).

🌈 Google's AI improves privacy

The Gemini app introduced two new features with privacy in mind:

Temporary Chats is like incognito mode for Gemini. They're available for 72 hours (in case you have a follow-up) and then disappear. You can ask all the weird questions you want and not worry the bot will remember.

Keep Activity is a toggle that you can disable if you don't want your data used to train the AI model.

​

🤔 Did You Know?

You know there is a way to autofit your rows and columns FAST?

Don't do it one by one. Pfft. No one has time for that 🙃

👉 Select all and only then double-click to autofit.

📽️ Check out the mouse and keyboard shortcuts here.

​

👏 When the busywork is gone...

The truth is, the work can feel endless.

Same steps. Same clicks. Same routine.

Marconi felt it too. Then he automated one process. Just one.

And suddenly... space. Breathing room.

Enough to remember he could grow again.

That’s the gift of automation: a little bit of yourself back.

And that's what a course like Automate with Power Query is designed for.

This course walks you through real business cases. You won’t just learn the tool. You’ll start seeing new ways of working you never imagined.

What’s one process you could take off your plate this week?

Best,

Leila

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