How To Split A Cell Diagonally In Excel

Someone reached out to me today because they’d been reading one of my Excel guides and were wondering how you could split a cell diagonally in Excel and still be able to enter information into each section.

Short answer is, you really can’t. At least, not that I’m aware of.

A quick internet search turned up a couple approaches that basically involve creating the appearance of a split cell, but the problem with that approach is that if you want to do anything with the values you’ve split, you really can’t.

For two different ways to do that approach,  see here and here.

It bugged me that you couldn’t do anything with the values with these approaches, so I came up with another way to do it. (Which may already be out there, but it wasn’t the first five or six of the search results I found and I told the person who emailed me I’d put it up here with screenshots for them.)

This approach involves using four cells to basically create the appearance of one split cell. Here are the steps.

1. Select four cells, two in one row and the two directly below them. Fill those cells with white and put a border around them.
2. Pick two opposite cells. So in this case A and D or B and C and choose Format Cells, Border and then add a diagonal border to create a continuous line across the selected cells. Here I’ve chosen A and D so I want line slanted left to right.
3. Enter your values into the other pair of cells. So in this case that would be B and C. Middle Align and Center the values in those cells and then change the height of the columns and width of the rows involved to get the appearance you want.
4. The issue you now have is that for that diagonal box there are two rows and two columns around it. If you wanted to create just one row to the right of the box or just one column below the box, you’d need to use merge cells. Here I’ve used Merge & Center on cells H6 and H7 and on cells F8 and G8. I then used the Format Painter to merge and center the remaining cells. (You have to do it one row or column at a time or you’ll end up with one giant merged cell, which you don’t want.)

And there you have it. A way to create a diagonal across a “cell” and still be able to manipulate the values in that cell if you need to.

(For more Excel resources, click here: https://mlhumphrey.com/microsoft-excel-resources/)

Author: M.L. Humphrey

M.L. Humphrey is an author who has been published under a variety of pen names and across a variety of subjects and genres. You can contact M.L. at mlhumphreywriter [at] gmail.com. View all posts by M.L. Humphrey