In LibreOffice Calc and OpenOffice Calc, there is often a need to quickly enter several rows of text that will not be part of any calculation area. This is often done to write notes relevant to the entire spreadsheet or a large section of it.
When writing text that is longer than the cell (most of the time it is, for these purposes), the grid lines are distracting. The normal technique is to write some text, then select all the columns it extends into, and merge those cells together. Then that process then has to be repeated for each row.
Is there a more efficient way to complete this procedure?