Forum Discussion

SamW's avatar
SamW
Qrew Cadet
6 years ago

Combine values from an entire column of text fields

I have a table of 'Research Words'. It has about 60 rows, each containing a field named 'Research Word'. I would like to have a separate multi-line text field somewhere else that concatenates all those different Research Words.

I tried creating a parent table - 'Research Words Combined' - and using the Combine Text summary field. But it turns out that has limit on the number of characters and rows it can combine (I think it's 25 rows).

Can anyone suggest a way I can successfully combine all my Research Words into one field?
APIs and custom code
Formulas and functions
Quickbase Automations
  • QuickBaseCoachD's avatar
    QuickBaseCoachD
    Qrew Captain
    6 years ago
    No problem. But it will take 3 loops.

    You already have your Combined text Summary field.

    Use the ToText function to change it to text. It will appear as a semi colon space delimited sequence. Call it [First 25 terms]

    Look that up to the child table

    Make a new combined text Summary field subject to the condition the the [First 25 Terms] does not contain the value of the research word.. Call it [Next 25 terms]

    Repeat the ToText and then the lookup and then do yet another combined text summary of the research words but now have two conditions in your filter to exclude if the word is in either the First or the Next.

    Once you assemble the three fields into one using say the List function.
    List "; ", and then three fields separated by commas)

    you will have a long semi colon delimited string.

    You can use this code to convert that to a clean vertical list

    var text CombinedText = ToText([My Text Concatenation Field]);

    var text RemoveSpaceAfterSemiColon =
    SearchAndReplace($CombinedText, "; ",";");

    // substitute new line for semicolon
    SearchAndReplace($RemoveSpaceAfterSemiColon,";","\n")