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The Google Sheets merge cells shortcut, and what exists instead

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 24 September 2026 · 10 min read

There is no google sheets merge cells shortcut in Google’s own list of them. That list runs to about four thousand words, and the word merge does not appear in it once. What Google does publish are the keys that open the Format menu and the Tool finder, and that is the useful answer.

How to merge cells in Google Sheets from the keyboard

1. Select the cells. Rows, columns or a block — Google’s instruction is to “Select the rows, columns, or cells to merge”, and what you pick decides which merge options are offered.
2. Press Alt + /, or Option + / on a Mac. This is the Tool finder. It searches the menus rather than the sheet.
3. Type merge and choose the merge you want from what the finder offers.
4. Or open the menu instead. Alt + o in Google Chrome, Alt + Shift + o in other browsers, Ctrl + Option + o on a Mac — then Merge cells, then how you want them merged.

The second step is the one worth keeping: the Tool finder searches the menus, so it does not depend on remembering which menu a command lives in. Google’s page calls it “Tool finder (formerly search the menus)”.

The Alt + O sequence, and who wrote it

This is not a complaint about the sequence. It is about knowing which half you can rely on: if the menus open in another language, or the browser intercepts the key, the published half still holds and the borrowed half may not.

How the absence was measured

A page that says something does not exist should say how it looked. Google’s keyboard shortcuts page for Sheets was read end to end on 23 September 2026 with two different tools, because a missing word can also mean a page that did not load properly. Both readings returned about four thousand words, and neither contained the word.

The same page does list “Open a menu” entries for File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Data, Tools and the rest, and those are the keys in the table above. So the absence is specific: Google publishes how to reach the menu that holds the command, and not the command.

Why merging can cost you something later

Merged cells are not free, and Google says so on the page about sorting and filtering rather than on either of the pages about merging. Listing why the option to create a filter can be unavailable, it gives formatting as a cause and the remedy in one line: “Check for any merged cells or hidden rows or columns in the sheet. Try to unmerge the cells and unhide the rows or columns.” The same page adds a tip: “Filters also apply to merged cells.”

So Google names a merge as something that can stop you creating a filter, and also says that filters apply to merged cells. If a sheet is going to be sorted, filtered or fed into a pivot table, the merge is better done at the end, over a copy, or not at all.

What a merge costs in the cells themselves is set out on the page on merging cells in Excel, where Microsoft states which value is kept; Google’s merge page does not say. If all you want is two columns of text in one column, that is a different job from merging, and joining the values with a formula keeps both. Where you want the look of a merge without the cost, wrapping text and widening the column usually get there.

Not covered here. It does not cover merging cells in a Google Docs table, which is a different command in a different application.

It does not cover mail merge, which shares a word and nothing else.

It does not list every shortcut Google publishes for Sheets: the ones here are the ones that get you to this command, and the full list is a keystroke away at Ctrl + /.