Directional quotes anywhere you want them

[Kirk_Masden]

In formulas (expressions), AppSheet doesn’t distinguish between directional quotes (left and right different) and straight quotes. So, until now, I haven’t been able to use directional quotation marks in column names and in concatenate() expressions. Today, however, I hit upon a work around.

First, I noticed that AppSheet had no trouble with the directional quotation marks that I put in cells of my Google spreadsheet:

So, I decided to add a column with the left and right quotations marks

and then invoke them with left() and right() expressions:

I’m quite happy with the result:

It’s a fair amount of work, though. So, if anyone knows of a better, less complicated way of doing it, I’d be happy to learn about it.

[Kirk_Masden]

By the way, here’s a related post about working with quotation marks. It’s useful but doesn’t address the lack of distinction between straight and curved (directional) quotation marks.

Quotation marks in a text string Questions

In other languages, you can include quotation marks in a text string by surrounding the string with the opposite marking, i.e. single quotes around double quotes, or double quotes around single quotes. Appsheet does not seem to like this. I’m trying to use 6", as in “six inch”, in an expression. I’ve tried ‘6"’, text(6"), text(‘6"’), to no avail. Is Appsheet capable of handling this, and if so, how? Specifically I’m trying to see if 6" is in a list of text items: IN( text(6") , [column])

[Aleksi]

At least this syntax works with column names… ’ " ‘&“Name”&’ " ’ I added extra spaces so it would be easier to see.

[Kirk_Masden]

Aleksi:

’ " ‘&“Name”&’ " ’

I tried it but it came out looking like this:

I think the AppSheet interface sees both curved and straight quotation marks as the same character (or maybe I should say “converts all curved quotation marks to straight ones”). I think my work around may be necessary after all.

[Aleksi]

I used all of them with straight marks and it was working correctly.

[Kirk_Masden]

I see. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I was, however, able to get the more complicated method I described to work. I’ll try again later but at least I have one method that I’ve been able to get to work.

[Aleksi]

One way is… LEFT("""", 1)

[Kirk_Masden]

Aleksi:

LEFT("""", 1)

Hmmm. Still having trouble. This method also produced a straight quotation mark. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I appreciate your help though. Thanks for your trouble.

[Aleksi]

My mistake, I though you were looking just quotes but you are looking for directionals when I read your post again.

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks! I still learned a couple of tricks for how to show straight quotes when I want to. If other people what to have attractive directional (left, right) quotes in various parts of their app, they may want to try my method.

On this forum, quotation marks become directional, even if we only use straight ones when we type our messages. I think that’s because directional quotation marks look nicer. Perhaps AppSheet may want to consider something similar for the platform. Functionality is of the utmost importance in the platform but attractiveness is another strength of AppSheet that might be enhanced by more support for such quotation marks.