Concatination into a Notes Field?

[Sydney Sauber]

Hi Brendan,

I would like to have an RTF note (200-2500 words) that contains “notes” and at the top I would like it to contain metadata from the fields associated with it. This would be useful for exporting to applications that do not support metadata being displayed in tables or apps that don’t allow for as many columns (especially customized ones) as TF does.

For example, MacJournal, DEVONThink Pro Office, Even the macOS Finder. Most of the time one gets around this with a column called “tags” and then most apps at least have “tags”, like DEVON and MacJournal, but iCal does not, and sometimes I would like the “notes” data to be in the iCal “notes” field without losing the custom metadata I put into the TF Form. If you plan to say I can use the TEXT field and map it to the iCal notes filed, please skip that.

The ability to open the TF “notes filed in a floating window and the volume of data that can go into it, is of the utmost importance, for reasons related to my need to see multiple notes simultaneously in separate windows and to be able to resize them.

If concatenation won’t work, is there another way to achieve the result?

EX: This is what the result of the Note Field” concatenation would be, minus the data in the “[xxx]”

[Field names and values that would be concatenated into top of “note field” value]
Date created: 201806201433
Date modified: 201806301500
Project: I Knew I was Smart
Clarity level: 3
Followup: Yes

[“Note field” value, apart from the data from other fields]
Notes:
Note that deleting the track number is necessary only if you find it offending. If the the track numbers are properly set, they are great assets actually. So, the first thing is to try to synchronize the files to your iPhone and see of the order is good enough. If you find some files misplaced, say the 12th set as 2nd in the order, you need to go and remove the track number of those files (or from all the files). If you find the whole CDx (or a chunk of files) misplaced, probably, the Disk# is the culprit. So, go and remove (fix) it.

But, I have found one special advantage in removing track# totally from my files. If the track#s are removed, the Titles (filenames) of the files will be clearly visible in my iPod; otherwise, the iPod will be showing me only the track numbers (as 3 of 20). Being able to read the titles is actually good idea b/c you will be able to read in which chapter, section or subsection you are in, how the sections/chapters are organized enhancing your comprehension; you can also easily skip the chapter/topic that you are not interest in ; or just jump forth to the sections of your special interest. When I was listening Bertrand Russel’s classic, “The History of Western Philosophy”, I had been skipping some of the sections about certain specific philosophers such as Hume and Descartes because I already heard (read) enough about them, targeting on less known ones helps me to get new ideas. The following picture is snapped from MM’s window. The names and numbers under Title column (marked Blue) will be visible in my iPhone. If I had no the Track# removed and hence the Titles invisible in my iPod, I wouldn’t be able to see which section is about which philosopher, hence, forced to listen every section.

image

(You can, by the way, use an application called FlickTunes to supplement your Title reading experience in your iPod app. Search it in App Store.)

[Brendan]

Hi Sydney,

There was no image attached to your post.

However, I’m really not sure what the question is. I read your entire post but I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. A Note field is just that, something you can type anything you want into it. There’s no restrictions on what you can add to the top, middle, or bottom of it.

When you mention iCal, do you mean the “Add to Calendar” function in Tap Forms on the Date & Time field? That’s just for adding a reference to your record for the specified date to your Calendar (or Reminders app). A link will be place in Calendar to take you back to the Tap Forms record.

As for exporting, Tap Forms will export the Note field data as plain text, not as RTF.

Sorry if I’ve misunderstood your question.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Sydney Sauber]

The responsibility to be clear is on me. I am not a tech worker, so some of my vocab. is probably wrong.

Let me try again.

Let me try a more simple example. Let’s say I create 4 “Text” fields and 1 “Note” filed. Then enter text strings into the values fields in the first 4. The 5th “Note” field is set to display the values from the first 4 fields plus the values I entered into it. This result would occur after a calculation concatenates the text strings.

So, I would enter:

Text Field 1 – value A
Text Field 2 – value B
Text Field 3 – value C
Text Field 4 – value D
Note Field 5 – value E

And then after the calculation ran, it would look like this:

Text Field 1 – value A
Text Field 2 – value B
Text Field 3 – value C
Text Field 4 – value D
Note Field 5 – value A, B, C, D, E

========================
Note Export:
When exporting the Note Filed data, what happens to the images in the RTFD?
If the data is exported as text, are the images stripped completely or do they end up in attachment folders, like the attachments?
========================
iCal:
I want the DATA to show up in the Calendar, not just the link.
If I archive the calendar file or do anything that can possibly screw up the links, like…not have my computer connected to my server, I want the option to have the data in the Calendar, MacJournal allows you to import or export data between the two apps. So, I can have a link, or I can have the same notes and event title in both apps. What MacJournal does NOT do that TF does, is allow for customizing metadata via the field creation / column creation.

To get the data in Calendar and in TF to be the same, assuming I have mapped the fields properly, I need to export one or the other, change the format from ics to CSV or vice versa.

The way it applies to the “Notes” filed is if the fields that were concatenated include metadata that doesn’t have fields in the calendar app (Keywords, prices), but do have “Text” fields in TF, then the TF NOTES that end up in the Calendar Notes field will show that metadata.

This way if I need to read the notes (2500 words) from a calendar I archived 5 years ago, I can convert the ics to CSV, then read it in TF as a “Record”, which functionally more like a TextEdit document housed in a database. I would do that instead of opening the archive in calendar, which overwrites the current calendar, and I don’t have to open the calendar in a spreadsheet, which makes it hard to read.

There is a market for this functionality. Many people have apps that let you work with calendar data, especially if you use it for documentation, not just “appointments”.

None of the apps do what TF does, it would just be nice if more of what has to happen occurred in the background (on the programming end – ;-) ) instead of on the user side, manually.

Clearer?

Is this any clearer?

[Paul Wirth]

I’m resurrecting this thread because I have a similar question. While one solution to Sydney’s question would be a Calculation formula of "Text Field 1" + "," + "Text Field 2" + "Text Field 3" + "Text Field 4", this only works for a known number of text fields.

What I want to do is the following:

I have one form with Names, linked to an Appointments form with multiple appointments for each person, with notes for each appointment.

I want to concatenate the notes from the Appointments form within one field in the Names form.

Unfortunately, the available formula only seems to allow for counting the total number of notes in the linked form, rather than accessing their content and concatenating it.

Brendan? Any advice?

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