Add UI to handle EDIT / JOIN Columns to perform basics of concatenation.

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The proposed UI, "Edit Column / Join Several Columns" would allow simple 
column name input with separators to perform the concatenation function:

cells["col1"].value + ", " + cells["col2"].value

UI would expose the following input or clickable Add columns in an ordered 
concatenation such as:

New column name, col1, col4, col2

which would perform a merge across col1, col4, col2 in that order and add 
results into "New column name"

Original issue reported on code.google.com by thadguidry on 29 May 2010 at 8:34

• Blocking: #239

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'm not following.  Can't this be done already?
Edit Column > Add Column based on this Column
Use the GEL expression:
cells["col1"].value + "," + cells["col2"].value

Or do you want an entirely UI way of doing this?

The workflow would have to be something similar to the following:
Edit Column > Add Column by joining Columns
Dialog box with multiple dropdown lists of columns to join together, and a 
textbox 
for the separator.

I'm not convinced it would any quicker or easier.

Original comment by iainsproat on 1 Jun 2010 at 1:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Depends entirely on who the user audience is intended with Gridworks, I guess.  
But 
even Excel 2007 appealing to the masses has a little UI helper now to frame up 
this 
statement: =CONCATENATE(B:B," ",C:C)  Look at FORMULAS / TEXT / CONCATENTATE.

Original comment by thadguidry on 1 Jun 2010 at 3:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by iainsproat on 14 Oct 2010 at 5:00

• Added labels: Priority-Low, Component-UI
• Removed labels: Priority-Medium

[GoogleCodeExporter]

"I'm not following.  Can't this be done already?
Edit Column > Add Column based on this Column
Use the GEL expression:
cells["col1"].value + "," + cells["col2"].value

Or do you want an entirely UI way of doing this?"

In my case at least, this is only a partial solution. This approach succeeds 
where the columns in question have assigned values. Where some are null, 
however, the concatenation fails. 

Original comment by sogr...@gmail.com on 19 Nov 2010 at 4:26

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This can be done as described only if there are no nulls in the data at hand; 
things become considerably uglier if there are. 

Original comment by russell....@gmail.com on 30 Jun 2011 at 12:43