Microsoft Excel Tutorial - How to Merge Workbook

Merging a workbook simply means applying changes to a workbook that is shared and has been saved recently as a different version.

To merge a workbook with another one, the workbooks have to be shared. This tutorial will go through the steps needed to merge workbooks using sample workbooks to show how to merge workbooks by example.

1. Create WorkBook1

Open Microsoft Excel and enter into cell A1, the value "one" and click File -> Save As. Select any folder location and give it the name "WorkBook1".

2. Click Tools -> Share Workbook

A window will open; check the check mark that says "Allow changes by more than one user at the same time. This allows workbook merging." and click OK. A window will say the workbook will be saved, click OK.

3. Add More Data

In cell A2, enter "two" and click on File -> Save As. Save it with the name "WorkBook2" and make sure you save it in the same folder where you saved "WorkBook1" from step 1 from above.

4. Close the Workbook

To simulate the merging of the workbook, close this workbook (close both workbooks).

5. Open WorkBook1

Navigate to the folder where you saved the workbooks and open "WorkBook1". You will see that in cell A1 it says "one" and cell A2 is empty. Now, we will merge "WorkBook2" with this workbook so that any changes that got made to "WorkBook2" will also reflect on this "WorkBook1".

6. Click Tools -> Compare and Merge Workbooks

Navigate to the folder with "WorkBook2" and select it and click OK. You will see that the cell A2 now shows "two" and this is still "WorkBook1".

If you were to close "WorkBook1" and re-open it, you will notice that it still says "two" on cell A2 which means that "WorkBook2" was successfully merged with "WorkBook1".

As you can see, merging workbooks is nothing more than re-synchronizing two different versions of the same shared Microsoft Excel workbook (with different names). This can be very helpful when you have multiple people making changes to the same workbook so that before one person continues work on it, they can make sure to merge the workbook to synchronize with a different version that another person made.

The thing to keep in mind when merging workbooks is that the workbooks being merged must be set to allow sharing as we did in step 2 of this tutorial.