Merge or combine records in same form

[Bob Bower]

Hi Brendan or Support,
This is a simple request. If I have say 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 records with many fields (in the view that looks like Excel), is there a way to merge or combine those records so that cells with some data overwrites into empty cells, and fields with matching data combines—all ending up with just one record in one row? The background is that I have my big database and I have people working on filling in gaps on Google Sheets. Then I want to import them. That adds a new record. Secondly, in my big database I have already imported several other people’s excel files and now I have 2, 3, 4, 5 or more records for each company. But one record will have data in fields X, Y and Z and the other in fields A, B and C. How do I merge them? That would really clean things up for me.
Thanks Bob

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[Brendan]

Hi Bob,

There’s no function for merging records. But you could use the Fill Up/Down function to copy data from a previous cell into the next cell (or vice versa) if you like. Or use copy/paste to copy the data from one record to another on the multi-column list view.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Jose Monteiro]

Hi Bob and Brendan,

Sorry for intruding myself here.

Bob,
Just being curious, could you tell me:
1. What is the size (how many records and fields) of your form?
2. Are your fields simple ones (I mean, text, numbers, check marks) – no pictures or audio recordings, etc.?
2. How often do you need to merge records?

Jose

[Bob Bower]

Hi Jose, Are you part of the support team or a helpful person?
I have a flat file contacts database with perhaps 325 fields, about seven layouts and 2,000 records. Because I imported several Excel files I now have 1,2, 3, 4 or sometimes 5 records for each person. So I want to merge each person’s extra records into one record. Please see attached sample where one person has data in different fields and some fields are empty. Brendan from Tapforms says to use the multi column view and use drag to manually do it. I suppose that may be best. Do you have another idea?
Cheers Bob

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[Brendan]

Hi Bob,

Jose is a very helpful and kind person.

I understand your predicament now. I suppose it would be very helpful in your situation to have a proper merge function to let you merge data. I realize given how much data and how many fields you have, it would take a heck of a long time to do that with my suggestion.

I would suggest now that you export all of your Tap Forms data as a CSV or XLSX file, then import that into Excel and use Excel to merge the rows. Then re-import that data into Tap Forms. Perhaps into a new form or a new database document to experiment with.

There are tutorials that I found by searching Google for merge duplicate rows with Excel

Thanks,

Brendan

[Jose Monteiro]

Hi Bob,

The only person providing support here is Brendan.

I’m just a user who likes to help other users if I know how to, and when I have some spare time do do it.
Like Brendan said within TF (Tapforms) the only way is to drag and drop.
325 fields is a lot.
2000 is also a respectable number of records.
I can imagine that with all that information you’ll spend days, when you have time, working on it.

The problem could be easily solved outside Tapforms.
But it depends on your knowledge on these matters.

What could be done:
1. Export your Form data as a CSV file.
2. Build a small and simple program in any suitable language (python is my favorite) that would do the job of reading and merging records.
(I could help you here if you need)
3. This program would write another CSV file with the same structure and the merged records.
4. Then you could delete all records from your Form and import your new merged CSV file into TF.
5. That is all.

I have files with 40,000 records (but not so many fields) and I’ve been doing some work like this one:
A. Reading a master CSV file.
B. Reading data from other CSV files and inserting data in the proper records in the master file.
C. Deleting records from my Form and importing the new CSV file.

The program will not take long to be written.
You’ll get your merged file in seconds.
You can then run this program whenever you want using the mentioned procedure.

If you need any help on this just let me know.

Now that I have written this post I’ve just noticed that Brendan has already made another suggestion to solve your problem with Excel.
I am not an expert in Excel, then probably is suggestion is simpler than mine, and simpler to you to use.

Regards,
Jose

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