Merging cells that have conditional formatting without losing the formatting

[jrooney7]

Hello all,

I have set up a conditional formatting rule that applies a fill color and border to cells that do not contain blanks. Once the user enters data into the sheet (and the conditional formatting does what it does), some of the cells will need to be merged in most cases (always merging down a column, never across rows if that matters). The cells to be merged will always vary and so can't be pre-merged. Once the merging is applied, however, the border stays only on what would be the original cell. The fill color works properly, but this border issue is driving me crazy!! The rule "Applies To" is changing from the original range (=$A$4:$E$500) to a labyrinth range to exclude the merged cells (ex. =$A$4:$E$6,$A$10:$E$500,$A$7:$B$9,$D$7:$E$9). I really don't want the user to have to change this range back, which would fix the problem, I just don't want to have the problem in the first place...

Any thoughts?

[jrooney7]

Bump no response

[FDibbins]

My advice - dont use merged cells, they cause all sorts of problems with formulas