So I have spent too much on this issue alone and 4 hours with Microsoft. Some of their techs can reproduce the error, some cannot. This effects all of our users on 2013.

Problem: While working on a spreadsheet, if you accidentally extend to cells that are different sizes you will get this warning message. "To do this, all the merged cells need to be the same size." after clicking OK the file becomes corrupt. Now when you modify any of the cell's values, the individual cells do not update to reflect the new value. From this point, if you zoom in on the file, you will see a secondary grid behind the original one. It's very strange but I can reproduce it all day long on any system.

For those that want to try to reproduce the problem, please do the following.

1) open a new worksheet

2) merge cells A1 and B1; enter a 1 value in this cell

3) Expand this selection down to B7; now you will have a sequence of numbers vertically of 1-7

4) Now go back to cell A1 and expand that selection down to 14

5) You will receive a warning saying "To do this, all the merged cells need to be the same size." Click ok. At this point the numbered cells may be come illegible; I have had mixed results

6) Now change the value of 2 to 555 or any number, do the same with 3 and so on; the values will no longer update

7) To see the double grid, zoom in on the excel file and you will see a new grid with the values you modified; If you leave the file alone for about 15 minutes, it will eventually update those numbers into your original cells.

So there is my long drawn out problem and I'm hoping someone here will have an answer.

Thank you all in advance

BTW: This issue does not exist in 2010.

• Edited by TPCLV Wednesday, January 28, 2015 12:54 AM more info

TTT

Can others reproduce this error?

Hi,

I did the steps you described and can reproduce the issue. Zooming did indeed show double grids. Now the strange thing is the numbers did not get updated after I changed them. I added a new sheet and that showed the double grid and numbers from the first sheet. Intrigued by it I added another sheet and that showed the same setting. Double grid and same numbers. Strange because I did not copy anything. So went back to sheet 2 and decided to copy down cell A1 (which originally had nothing in it so i was copying nothing). Then i went back to sheet 1 and the double grid was gone and everything was updated. Changing the values showed immediate result after that. So by adding a new sheet and copying empty cells down the problem seems to be solved. Now this is not a solution but could be a temporary workaround if needed because this has to be some kind of bug :-)

Thanx for sharing your experience always good to know!

Thanks for looking at this. Right, any new sheet will copy over items from the first. If you give the sheet enough time 5-10 min it will update itself without doing anything. The time is probably what updated the cells eventually, I do not think it was any changes you made. Try it again and then stay on sheet 1, you will see it update after 5-10 min One thing I did notice is that it works fine when running Excel /safe. Oddly enough though I have no active plugins to disable so I wonder what else is not running in safe mode that makes this scenario work. I installed the newest Office 2013 from our EA site on a laptop right out of the box this morning and I had the same buggy result. Therefore I believe it's something already in Excel that causes the issue, not some 3rd party add-in.

Anyone else like to give it a shot?