We see the same question every week, and it points to a deeper problem. This user wants to make tables look nicer with objects but can't get a dropdown to work inside them. They are searching for a "Merge Objects" function that does not exist, and they are stuck. Our take is blunt: the tools they are wrestling with were never designed for this kind of work. Trying to force objects and dropdowns to cooperate inside Excel is a sign that the spreadsheet itself is the wrong container for the task.
What this means in practical terms is that users are spending time fighting the interface instead of solving the problem. The user here wants a clean, interactive table with dropdown menus that sit inside visual elements. That is a reasonable goal. But Excel treats objects and cells as separate layers. You cannot merge them. You cannot embed a dropdown into a shape or a picture. The platform simply does not support that kind of integration. So the workaround becomes a series of hacks: aligning objects manually, layering them over cells, hoping they stay in place. It is fragile, it breaks when you scroll, and it takes ten times longer than it should.
This is where a smarter approach changes everything. An AI-native spreadsheet does not separate objects from data. You define a dropdown once, and it lives inside whatever visual you build around it, a card, a panel, a custom table. You do not cut, paste, or merge anything. You tell the system what you want, and it handles the layout. The user's frustration is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of the tool. When the tool treats design and data as separate problems, the user becomes the bridge between them. That bridge is where time and patience get lost.
We believe the solution is not a hidden function or a macro. It is a different philosophy. Stop asking how to force objects into a grid that was built for numbers. Start asking what your data could look like if the design layer worked with the data layer from the beginning. That is the shift worth exploring. The user who posted this question is not alone. They are the norm. And the industry has accepted this friction for too long. It is time to expect more from the tool, not more from yourself.