Excel VBA merging cells in a function - excel

Question

I wrote a crude function to select and concatenate cells based on a range.
Function GetSkills(CellRef As String, CellRefEnd As String, Delimiter As String)
Dim CellStart As Range
Dim CellEnd As Range
Dim LoopVar As Long
Dim StartRow As Long
Dim EndRow As Long
Dim Concat As String
Dim Col As Long
Set CellStart = Worksheets(1).Cells.Range("B" & CellRef)
Set CellEnd = Worksheets(1).Cells.Range("B" & CellRefEnd)
Col = CellStart.Column
StartRow = CellStart.Row
EndRow = CellEnd.Row
With Range(CellStart, CellEnd)
.Merge
.WrapText = True
End With
Concat = ""
For LoopVar = StartRow To EndRow
Concat = Concat & Cells(LoopVar, Col).Value
If LoopVar <> EndRow Then Concat = Concat & Delimiter & " "
Next LoopVar
GetSkills = Concat
End Function
Within it I'm trying to merge the cells, when I run the function I get a prompt saying:
The selection contains multiple data values. Merging into once cell
will keep the upper-left most data only
I click OK and Excel crashes, restarts, and prompts the dialog again. Is there another way to merge a block of cells using VBA?

Answer 1

Generally merging cells is not a good idea. It is a cosmetic formatting approach that can cause havoc with VBA code.
Disclaimers aside, a few suggestions
use a Sub rather than a Function given you want to work with altering the range
use Application.DisplayAlerts to suppress the merge cells message
you can cut down the code significantly
code
Sub Test()
Call GetSkills(2, 4, ",")
End Sub
Sub GetSkills(CellRef As String, CellRefEnd As String, Delimiter As String)
Dim CellStart As Range
Dim CellEnd As Range
Dim Concat As String
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Set CellStart = Worksheets(1).Cells.Range("B" & CellRef)
Set CellEnd = Worksheets(1).Cells.Range("B" & CellRefEnd)
Concat = Join(Application.Transpose(Range(CellStart, CellEnd)), Delimiter)
With Range(CellStart, CellEnd)
.Merge
.WrapText = True
.Value = Concat
End With
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
End Sub