Excel filtering for merged cells

Question

I'm trying to make a calculation of hours worked for each employee on each project that he worked on. But i don't know how to select because the cells that are containing the name of the employee are merged like in the picture. And if i want to see on project no. 3 which are the employees that worked on, the Excel Filtering can't take the name "John" which corresponds only to project no.1. To be more clear, I need to know how the filtering will be made for cells A3 and A4. If i will unmerge the cells, John will be only on cell A2, and in fact he worked also on projects 2 & 3.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have a Merged Cell, and you attempt to Filter for it, you will only get the first row:

To fix this, you first need to start by creating your Merged Cells somewhere else, unmerge your filter-cells, and fill the values into all cells:

Then, you can Copy the merged cells, and Paste Special > Formats over the cells you want to merge:

You can now delete your temporary merged cells, and when you filter you will get all rows for the merged cell:

 
{EDIT} Here is a macro that will automatically apply the changes above to a specified range:

Public Sub FilterableMergedCells()
    Dim WorkingRange As Range
SelectRange:
    Set WorkingRange = Nothing
    On Error Resume Next
    Set WorkingRange = Application.InputBox("Select a range", "Get Range", Type:=8)
    On Error GoTo 0
    'If you click Cancel
    If WorkingRange Is Nothing Then Exit Sub
    'If you select multiple Ranges
    If WorkingRange.Areas.Count > 1 Then
        MsgBox "Please select 1 continuous range only", vbCritical
        GoTo SelectRange
    End If

    Dim ScreenUpdating As Boolean, DisplayAlerts As Boolean, Calculation As XlCalculation
    ScreenUpdating = Application.ScreenUpdating
    DisplayAlerts = Application.DisplayAlerts
    Calculation = Application.Calculation

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    Application.DisplayAlerts = False
    Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual

    Dim WorkingCell As Range, MergeCell As Range, MergeRange As Range, OffsetX As Long, OffsetY As Long
    OffsetX = WorkingRange.Cells(1, 1).Column - 1
    OffsetY = WorkingRange.Cells(1, 1).Row - 1
    'Create temporary sheet to work with
    With Worksheets.Add
        WorkingRange.Copy .Cells(1, 1)
        'Loop through cells in Range
        For Each WorkingCell In WorkingRange.Cells
            'If is a merged cell
            If WorkingCell.MergeCells Then
                'If is the top/left merged cell in a range
                If Not Intersect(WorkingCell, WorkingCell.MergeArea.Cells(1, 1)) Is Nothing Then
                    Set MergeRange = WorkingCell.MergeArea
                    'Unmerge cells
                    MergeRange.MergeCells = False
                    'Replicate value to all cells in formerly merged area
                    For Each MergeCell In MergeRange.Cells
                        If WorkingCell.FormulaArray Is Null Then
                            MergeCell.Formula = WorkingCell.Formula
                        Else
                            MergeCell.FormulaArray = WorkingCell.FormulaArray
                        End If
                    Next MergeCell
                    'Copy merge-formatting over old Merged area
                    .Cells(WorkingCell.Row - OffsetY, WorkingCell.Column - OffsetX).MergeArea.Copy
                    WorkingCell.PasteSpecial xlPasteFormats
                End If
            End If
        Next WorkingCell
        .Delete
    End With

    Set MergeRange = Nothing
    Set WorkingRange = Nothing

    Application.ScreenUpdating = ScreenUpdating
    Application.DisplayAlerts = DisplayAlerts
    Application.Calculation = Calculation
End Sub

Answer 2

Use Filter. It is smart enough to deal with the merged cells. E.g., if you have a filter like this:

and you filter projects 2, 3 and 4 then you get this:

which is quite ok.