Split/Divide/Section a set of rows

I'm sorry for rushing in here without even posting an introduction or anything but I have a silly problem to say the least, and in order to boost my productivity tenfold I really need to know how to divide two sets of rows without sacrificing a row.

I use an excel file that fetches data from other excel files from my work colleagues, and there's this one colleague of mine who likes using colored rows to divide data into sections. This ruins my data because my excel file basically finds an empty row and ignores it, writing the data for the next row in the row where the colored empty row should be.

To put it another way, my file skips a row because it finds an empty row that is simply colored and serving as a "separator".

Is there a way to make a separator kind of thing that doesn't sacrifice a row?

I want to be able to solve this without having to make my colleague go out of her way to adapt to my file. If I can simply present her with a better way to section data, that would be ok.

How about just putting a 0 in the cells she is using as a separator and making the font the same colour as the background so its not seen and its not empty?

I love you.