Can't merge table cells - Merge Cells button "greyed out"

Solution 1:

1. A formatted table disallows cell-merging.

2. So the next question would be "how to remove table formatting in Excel". Basically, in some versions of Excel, at the end of the Table Styles window, there is a Clear button.

   

3. But, in some recent versions of Excel, that Clear button is gone. It turns out, you can use a "Convert to Range" feature to remove the table formatting. (Why they chose to use "Convert to Range" to mean "Remove Formatting", is totally beyond me.)

   

Solution 2:

If you are using Track Changes and have deleted rows in the table, the deleted cells may not be merged and will be "greyed out". This is because cell-merging is not tracked, so Word would have no way of recording the deleted rows if it allowed you to merge the cells that are above and below them.

You can work around this issue by showing All Changes, thus revealing all the tracked deleted rows. Then you can simply relocate the cells you wish to merge to be adjacent to each other, so that the tracked deleted rows are no longer in between them. The Merge Cells button should become available again.

Solution 3:

I had the same problem and later realized that the two cells I was trying to merge didn't line up exactly. I couldn't tell inside the "Home" view, but when I switched to print preview, I could see that the cell in column 1 included only one row, while the cell in column 2 included two rows (because I had previously split the column 2 cell into multiple rows). I deleted several rows and started fresh in a new row.