This is my preferred method of showing text across a selection of cells. Use this instead of merging cells. Merging cells can play havoc with some other excel functions.
My theory about why “Center across selection” is not widely used is the placement in the dialog box.

You see it is at the bottom of the list.
This option will center the text across a selection of cells without merging any cells

Did you know that Excel can help with entering the new year in your dates.

Instead of typing 02/01/09 into a cell, just type 02/01 and excel will guess that this is a date and use the current year as a default.