I understand what you propose and even implemented it to see if it was
something I didn't really catch, nevertheless you can't merge the cells
to actually place a single object spanning the two rows height. And this
is what I think OP wanted (even though it was years ago). So yes, the
appearance will be a solid box, but this is certainly not merging the
two cells.TL;DR: Appearance as a single cell yes, but merging the two
cells no.