Merging rows in a lookup table

Hi, I have a large spreadsheet I’m using Coda to tidy up and ultimately host.

As part of this I have turned some columns into Lookup tables so I can clean up similar items. However I can’t find out how to merge them even though I update the row to a new name. I’m guessing it treats each row as a unique name but don’t know what to do next. A new lookup table from this lookup table, which sounds complicated.

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Hi @Jonathan_Richardson,

The quick way would be something like this:

However, I’d warmly suggest not to: the inconsistency comes for the underlying design.
The fact that the lookup name is the same, hides the fact that the row is in fact a different one.

Rather, I’d create a different table with unique rows of the vegetables and a column with a list of original names, so that you can keep the original information with the full consistency of the data model.

Do let me know if I correctly got your point.
Cheers

It depends on how you’re using these lookups for which way you might want to set the tables up. It looks to me like you have a setup of “Category”, “Item”, and “Count”. And it also seems like the counts might be multiple rows of the same item, so a running list instead of a total for one row.

Here’s a sample of a possible table setup. I lean this direction because it lets me easily find totals for the category and for the items.

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Thanks both. Yes both methods will work, much appreciated