Creating a Center Across Selection Button

If you are a long-time user of Excel, you know that in versions of the program up through Excel 95, there was a toolbar button that would center the contents of a particular cell across a number of columns. In Excel 97 this toolbar button was replaced with one that merges cells and centers the content within the merged cells. The difference, of course, between the two tools is that one merges prior to centering, and the other does not.

If you miss the old Center Across Selection button, you may wonder if you can ever get it back. (You probably know that you can do the same thing by choosing Format | Cells | Alignment and then use the Horizontal drop-down list to choose Center Across Selection.) There is no built-in Center Across Selection tool that you can place on the toolbar, but you can create a simple macro that will do the same thing:

Sub CenterAcrossColumns()
    With Selection
        .HorizontalAlignment = xlCenterAcrossSelection
        .MergeCells = False
    End With
End Sub

Once you have the macro, you can assign it to a shortcut key or to a toolbar button. The macro can then be easily added to your Personal.xls sheet (as described in other issues of ExcelTips) so it is available from all your workbooks.