Merging cells is new to Excel 97, and it can be a little tricky. All the cells in the range to be merged must be empty except the one in the upper left corner. If the other cells contain data, copy them to the upper-leftmost cell before you perform the merge.

The figure shows how merged cells can be used to create a vertical label. The cells in B2:B15 are merged into one cell. The label, which is in Cell B2, is displayed across the entire merged cell range. I also changed the text orientation (select FormatûCells, select Center in both the Horizontal and Vertical lists, set the orientation to 90 degrees, and check Merge cells).