"I don't think the column A cells have to be merged just because they're blank. "

But if you are using code...then yes they DO have to. Unless you are going to do further testing logic. Something that says THIS blank cell is not to be merged, but THAT blank cell does.

In other words, if your logic is: IF cell is blank do this

Then ALL blank cells will get that action, unless you add further logic to determine - again - THIS blank cell, do something; THAT blank cell do not. VBA can not tell the difference; if you ask it to test if a cell is blank, it can do that, but it has no way (unless you tell it) to determine that Blank_Cell_A is "different" from Blank_Cell_B.

Re; merged cells. The problem is that once you merge ONE cell, VBA now gets very messed up with further actions. VBA can not handle tables with vertically merged cells. Yes, it can do one. But if your code is still iterating through the cells, VBA gets out of whack.