I have two excel spread sheets. The first spread sheet has a lis of names from a1 thru a250, I copy them. I go to my next excel spread she which has cells a1:d1 merged thur a250:d250. When I paste my copied values, it unmerges my cells. How can I fix this

The best thing you could do is learn how to mimic the 'appearance' of merged cells without actually merging them. That's one of the worst features of Excel that I've seen, as it prevents many otherwise simple and sensible formatting and calculation options. The merging that you're doing between A1:D1 cells, for example, can be mimicked by putting a value in cell A1, then selecting cells A1:D1 and doing Format / Cells / Alignment / Center Across Selection. The cells will appear to be merged, but the value exists only in A1. Much safer, too, because if either B, C, or D columns are deleted it won't wipe out your data in A as deletion of a 'merged' column would.

I'm amazed it doesn't also replace your existing data. Insert a new Column A - right click on the letter A in the column header and select Insert, although I agree with CW that merging cells causes problems. I can't imagine anything that would make you need so many merged cells, merged cells are normally only used for headings.

Instead of pasting the normal way, right-click, choose "paste special", and select "Formulas" from the list.