Merge cells without losing data! How to do that?

I got an excel file, with below data:
A1: "Contains Data 1"
A2: "Contains Data 2"
A3: "Contains Data 3"
A4: "Contains Data 4"
A5: "Contains Data 5"

All are text.

A1:A5 was merged, displayed data in A1: "Contains Data 1"

It is usual, if A2:A5 were deleted.

But I tried :
B1=A1
B2=A2
...

It said that A2:A5 are not losing data, though they were merged.

Do you know how to do that?