Sorting with unequal cell size

Hi

I have two columns in my excel sheet namely 'Painting date' and 'Raw data'. Each cell in 'Painting date' column consist of 10 merged rows whereas 'Raw data' consists of single rows. The 'data' in 'Painting date' is unsorted'. I want to sort 'both' the columns as per 'Painting date' column. But the excel does not allow this and says ' The operation requires the merged cells to be identically sized'.

The only way around this is that i un-merge the 'Painting date' column into single row column and then do the sorting. But doing so manually takes lot of time and i have more than 1000 rows of data. Is there is any way i can un-merge the 'Painting date' column automatically/quickly. The format tool does not work.

'PLZ see the attached excel file for detail'

Thanks in advance