Most of us have been bit by the merged cell problems at one time or another
your best bet is to use a helper column where you make the cells = the value
you want to compare.
if it is always 4 cells and they are always adjacent it wont be hard to do
=c2 in four cells and then copy these four down as far as you need.

if the number of cells merged is not constant or if there isodd spacing it
becomes much more difficult

"Amanda" wrote:

I have a worksheet with data on the first tab. Cells C2, C3, C4 and C5 are
merged cells and cells E2, E3, E4 and E5 are NOT merged but coinside with the
other cells in the respective rows. Then the next 4 cells are merged in
column C and they again go with column E which is never merged. I am trying
to get a count of items in Column E that have "Absent" in the column AND
Column C has "Allen". If I un-merge the cells then the data only goes into
the first cell and the others are left blank. I want it to assume that if
the cells are merged then all merged cells contain that data.
Please help! I worked on this for several hours.