Separate by Commas menu item?

1

I just noticed this menu item “Separate by Commas” for one of my columns. Any idea what it does? I don’t want to click it in my production doc without knowing what it does, and my initial quick attempts to recreate it in a sandbox doc didn’t work.

image

The column type is “text”. Here is the formula for the column. It’s a pretty basic formula that uses List() withJoin().

List(
  If(thisRow.[Task Name].IsBlank(), "{Task Name} is blank.", ""),
  If(thisRow.Project.IsBlank(), "{Project} is blank.", ""),
  If(thisRow.Assignees.IsBlank(), "{Assignees} is blank.", ""),
  If(thisRow.[Task Stage].IsBlank(), "{Task Stage} is blank.", ""),
  If(thisRow.[Sort Order].IsBlank(), "{Sort Order} is blank.", ""),
  If(
    And(
      thisRow.[Task Stage] = [Ready for Review],
      thisRow.[Pending Reviewers].IsBlank()
    ),
    "{Task Stage} is 'Ready for Review', but there are no pending reviewers",
    ""
  ),
  If(
    And(
      thisRow.[Task Stage] = Done,
      thisRow.[Pending Reviewers].IsNotBlank()
    ),
    "{Task Stage} is 'Done', but there are pending reviewers",
    ""
  )
).Filter(CurrentValue.IsNotBlank()).Join(LineBreak())
1 Like
2

Hey @Kuovonne! This is an obscure shortcut to create a series of formulaic columns using ParseCsv. You can get it to show using simple text column w/ commas like this:

image
image2042×972 64.5 KB

1 Like
3

Thanks for the explanation. I experimented with it a little. Someone put a lot of though into when this menu item should show up, and when it should create columns. I noticed that once the menu item shows up, it remains up, even after the new columns are created, but it doesn’t always create new columns when clicked. It was also hard for me to predict the number of columns that would be created–there seems to be some logic related to the number of records with commas, and the number of commas in the records, and the order of those records.

I can see how this could be a handy tool when someone needs to split out a lot of values into their own columns.

I wish Coda had a way of creating (and editing/deleting) columns with code.

4

Appreciate the feedback! I’ve logged that request with the team :smile:

5

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