title: Spreadsheet::WriteExcel not writing string in Excel using merge_range
body: <p>I am using <code>Spreadsheet::WriteExcel</code> to create an excel and write some data into it.
  I am using the <code>merge_range</code> to merger some cells.
  But the problem is my below code does merge cells but dont show the data in it (<code>$str</code> contents).
  I am not able to figure out why????.</p>
  
  <p>Please help me, where did i going wrong?</p>
  
  <p>Below is the part of my code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#!/usr/bin/perl
  
  use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
  use strict;
  
  my $wb = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel-&gt;new('excel_test.xls');
  my $custom_ws = $wb-&gt;add_worksheet('Custom Parameters');
  
  my $wb_format_merge = $wb-&gt;add_format();
  $wb_format_merge-&gt;set_bold();
  $wb_format_merge-&gt;set_text_wrap();
  $wb_format_merge-&gt;set_border(1);
  $wb_format_merge-&gt;set_align('left');
  $wb_format_merge-&gt;set_valign('vcenter');
  
  my($row, $coll) = 0;
  my $merge_coll_len = 8;
  
  ###### write data ###
  my $str = "Please select the follwong metrics to generate custom report in Details sheet";
  $custom_ws-&gt;merge_range($row, $coll, $row, $coll + $merge_coll_len, $str,$merge_format);
  
  $row += 2;
  $custom_ws-&gt;write($row, $coll, 'select the data type for the reference');
  </code></pre>