Summarizing checkboxes

[Sarah_Arminta]

I have a very similar question to this recent post (how to summarize columns):

Formula Question for a Newbie

Hello! I’m new to Coda and have a basic task I’m trying to do with formulas. Essentially, I have multiple columns that contain a basic select list (either ✓ or X). I’d like to have a column that summarizes (with a bulleted list) the column names if there is a ✓ for that particular row. A sample is attached. [Screen Shot 2020-12-21 at 2.17.56 PM] Any ideas how to do this? I’ve tried all kinds of variations using IF(), Switch(), and SwitchIF(). Thanks so much!

But my situation is a bit more complex and makes both suggested solutions not super practical (although they are great solutions!)

I have a bunch of tracking tables where I track daily info for everything for symptoms, weather, mood, foods, health measurements, etc. Altogether there are hundreds of columns. Each one is either a checkbox or a number.

Why not do multi-select lookups? Because I send each of these out to a google spreadsheet where I do correlation calculations. So I figure I have to keep them all separate (unless someone can suggest a simpler way).

So, there are too many to practically write out if statements for every column. And I can’t do multi-select lookups because I need to keep separate columns.

Any ideas?

[Johg_Ananda]

@Sarah_Arminta your question isn’t clear. What specifically are you trying to do? Is this different thatn what we covered in this topic?

Tally up all check boxes in a row

Hi @Sarah_Arminta , This post talks about the same issue: https://community.coda.io/t/checkbox-count-in-a-table/6395 I tried to recreate @Nick_HE 's solution: To count the checkboxes in the row, you can actually just add them up. =CheckboxColumn1 + CheckboxColumn2 + CheckboxColumn3 here, but ran into an interesting condition where it works in one row but not another:

[Sarah_Arminta]

Sorry if I’m not being clear. I am trying to summarize my column data by listing out the selected options (as in the post I linked to) and counting them in some cases. But I need to do this without having to list out every single column within the formula (=CheckboxColumn1 + CheckboxColumn2 + CheckboxColumn3, etc). If I am reading through both previous posts correctly, all of the answers do that in one form or another, right? I have 100s of columns and using if statements or listing out each column isn’t practical for me. I’m thinking what I want to do isn’t possible yet, but wanted to make sure.

[Federico_Stefanato]

Hi @Sarah_Arminta,
sometimes these kind of situations - i.e. multiple columns with some semantic classification according to their values - cover a need for a different underlying data model.

Maybe this is not your case, but having a look at your doc (or a simplified example) would help to see if there are more efficient alternatives.

Thank you!

[Johg_Ananda]

The way I’ve dealt with this is to create a table where you have a select list type column that acts as the column headers. The net effect is MANY more rows, since each column now has to be represented as a row, however you can perform many functions on this schema that you can’t with your current. Life is full of trade-offs…

[Federico_Stefanato]

@Johg_Ananda

however you can perform many functions on this schema that you can’t with your current

Exactly.

@Johg_Ananda

Life is full of trade-offs…

Exactly; even more!