title: Weird behaivour getting value from merged cell
body: <p>I've come across this behaivour in Excel. Given these cells:</p>
  
  <pre><code>        A         B         C         D
     |---------|---------|---------|---------|
   1 | merged cell text  | foo     | bar     |
     |---------|---------|---------|---------|
   2 |         |         |         |         |
     |---------|---------|---------|---------|
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When <strong>Cell C1 is selected</strong> (<code>foo</code>), the following VBA statement returns <em>an empty string</em>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Debug.Print Selection.Offset(0, -1).Range("A1").Value
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This next VBA however returns the expected value (<code>merged cell text</code>):</p>
  
  <pre><code>Selection.Offset(0, -1).Select
  Debug.Print Selection.Range("A1").Value
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't for the life of my figure out <em>why</em> - surely as <code>Offset</code> returns a <code>Range</code> and <code>Selection</code> is also a <code>Range</code>, it's just breaking down the same behaivour over multiple lines, and getting different results. The behaivour does not occur when there are no merged cells.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone explain what's going on here?</p>