title: How to sort/filter merged cells in Excel?
body: <p>I have two columns - column A, and column B. Shown below.</p>
  
  <pre><code>  A  |  B
   ---------
    a  |  1
    a  |  2
    b  |  3
    b  |  1
    b  |  4
    c  |  2
    c  |  3
    c  |  4
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As you can see, column A has many redundant data, so I merged them together. Shown below. (I need to get rid of redundant data and represent them properly. That's the main task.)</p>
  
  <pre><code>  A  |  B
   ---------
    a  |  1
       |  2
   ---------
       |  3
    b  |  1
       |  4
   ---------
       |  2
    c  |  3
       |  4
   ---------
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now the problem is I cannot apply sort/filter function to both column. Error message was displayed when I want to sort the row. Filter does not work properly also, for example when I checked <code>a</code>, I should see <code>1</code> and <code>2</code> in column B, however only <code>1</code> is shown in column B.</p>
  
  <p>So my question is: how can I get the sort/filter work with merged cells?</p>