As mentioned @Sebastián V. Romero in his answer, if you not like to have horizontal lines (in your case they are drawn by by command \hline
), remove those commands from your table body code.
Beside this your MWE has two issues:
- table is wider than text area (see first table)
- that
\multirow
cell will not become wider than prescribed width of the column, in which it is, use intesd *
option=
, which overtake column width setting.
\documentclass{article}
%---------------- show page layout. don't use in a real document!
\usepackage{showframe}
\renewcommand\ShowFrameLinethickness{0.15pt}
\renewcommand*\ShowFrameColor{\color{red}}
%---------------------------------------------------------------%
\usepackage{array, booktabs, multirow}
\usepackage{caption}
\newcolumntype{M}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}m{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\caption{Table (1)}
\label{tab:table}
\begin{tabular}{*{5}{M{0.2\textwidth}}}
\toprule %?
TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\midrule
TEXT & \multirow{3}{=}{MULTI} & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\caption{Table (2)}
\label{tab:table}
\begin{tabular}{ *{5}{M{\dimexpr0.2\textwidth-2\tabcolsep}} }
\toprule %?
TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\midrule
TEXT & \multirow{3}{=}{MULTI} & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}

(red lines indicate page layout)
Addedndum (edited): In the case, that content of the multi row cell (MULTI) should be horizontally centered, you need to change \multirowsetup
:
\renewcommand\multirowsetup{\centering}
i.e.: complete MWE for the second table is than:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array, booktabs, multirow}
\usepackage{caption}
\newcolumntype{M}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}m{#1}}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\caption{Table (2)}
\label{tab:table}
\renewcommand\multirowsetup{\centering} % <---
\begin{tabular}{ *{5}{M{\dimexpr0.2\textwidth-2\tabcolsep}} }
\toprule %?
TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\midrule
TEXT & \multirow{3}{=}{MULTI}
& TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
TEXT & & TEXT & TEXT & TEXT \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}

\cline{1-1}\cline{3-5}
instead of the corresponding\hline
commands. To be honest though, I wouldn't recommend that kind of layout. Depending on the actual conents of the table, I would switch the first and second column and place the "multi" text in the upper of the three lines, leaving the following two in this column empty. I also wouldn't use\hline
s at all.