Unless you're planning to use gradients, textures, etc. in the rectangle (which your first post indicates is not what's intended), there's no colouring you can achieve via one that can't be achieved by cell shading, so the fact other cells are shaded is not a valid argument. Regardless, there is no way you can make a rectangle auto-resize to accommodate changes in the underlying cell's size.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]