Can You Merge Cells in Smartsheet?

Combine two cell values into one

If what you want is "First Name" and "Last Name" showing up together in a single cell, that is concatenation, not merging — and Smartsheet does it with a formula. The plus operator joins values, and quoted text inserts literal characters between them:

1. Add a column to hold the combined value.
2. In its first cell, join the two columns with +: =[First Name]@row + " " + [Last Name]@row
3. The quoted " " is what puts a space between them. Swap it for "-" or ", " for a different separator, or drop it entirely to run the values together.
4. Convert it to a column formula so new rows inherit it automatically, rather than drag-filling every time.

Combine a whole range with JOIN

For more than two cells, + gets unwieldy. The JOIN function takes a range and an optional delimiter instead:

JOIN(range, [delimiter]) — Smartsheet's own example, =JOIN([Clothing Item]1:[Item Number]1, ": "), joins two columns of row 1 and returns T-Shirt: C001.

The delimiter is optional; leave it out and the values run together with nothing between them. That example runs across a row, which is the usual case when you are collapsing several fields into one label — but a range down a column, [Clothing Item]1:[Clothing Item]3, works the same way.

What to do instead of a merged header cell

If you wanted a merged cell for layout — one label sitting above a group of rows — the Smartsheet answer is hierarchy rather than merging. Indent the rows underneath a parent row, and the parent acts as the group heading. It collapses and expands in the sheet, and unlike a merged cell it does not fight with sorting or filtering. (One caveat if you build reports from the sheet: reports do not display hierarchy — a parent row can still appear as a row, but its indented parent/child structure only shows in the sheet itself.)

And where the real problem is simply that a long value looks cut off, that is a display setting, not a structural one: widen the column or turn on text wrapping and the whole value shows without any merging involved.

Why merged cells do not exist here

This also fits how Smartsheet works — it is row-oriented: every row is a record, and features like reports, forms, automations, update requests and cross-sheet references all assume one value per column per row. A merged cell breaks that assumption, which is why the workarounds above are structural (a formula, a parent row) rather than cosmetic.

If you meant merging sheets, not cells

Searches for "smartsheet merge" split roughly down the middle, and the other half want to consolidate several sheets into one master sheet — a different job entirely. If that is you, our guide to combining multiple sheets covers the manual routes (copying rows, or a multi-sheet report), and the Merge Sheets tool appends rows from every sheet you select into one target, matching columns by title, with a preview before anything is written.

Frequently asked questions