Comparing similar text

AlfredoChavez · 04-21-2023 07:59 PM

Hi!

I have a long list of products I've previously requested stored in a Google sheet. I want to know if what I am asking has already been requested. Is it possible to create a filter that returns similar values? I do not want only exact matches because wording sometimes differs. Similar to VLOOKUP in Excel. Is there any way to do this? Maybe with a script?

Thanks a lot!

Marc_Dillon

"Similar" can mean a very wide range of things, you need to further specify.

AlfredoChavez

I have a product named 'Greenworks Pro 80V 21-Inch Brushless Self-Propelled Lawn Mower'

I want to be able to find it by typing 'GreenWorks lawn mower'. I tried splitting both texts, comparing the lists, giving each product a [match score], and then showing the top 10. But this implies that every search would need to modify every single product to get a match score and therefore recalculate every virtual column that is associated with it. This crashes every time I try to use it.

Marc_Dillon

Definitely not any easy way to do that in Appsheet.

Joseph_Seddik

Have a single-row edit-only table, with three columns for example or more, each column represents a single search keyword forcing them not to contain spaces.
In a dashboard view, show a Details view to this tables with quick edit columns.
In another view in the dashboard, show a slice with a row filter condition to show only the rows containing all the non-blank keywords.

In this way, the user will know whether a "similar" product name was entered before, and you also include your form view in the dashboard, so that the user will be able to check for similarities and submit the form within the same dashboard.

Additionally, you should think of ways to sanitize your data, adding a products table to prevent future repetitions.