Hi! I think I know the answer but figured I'...

[TN_Mapper]

Hi!

I think I know the answer but figured I’d ask anyway.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to create a dropdown list using a delimited set of data in a cell?

So, instead of creating a column with lookup values, my data is coming over prepopulated as:

a1 = “x,y,z” a2 = “a,b,c” a3 = “q,r,s”

I was hoping I could use data validation to turn the comma-delimited values that exist in the actual cell into dropdowns (either in the cell itself or by creating a new column).

Nothing appears to be available to support this.

You can hand-enter…but that’s no good in this scenario.

Anyone know of any custom formulas that can parse and generate a list like this?

[RezaRaoofi]

There is a pretty new split function you can use like this:

SPLIT(text, separator) returns a list of fragments of text between separator. For example, SPLIT(“Red:Yellow:Green”, “:”) returns a list containing the values Red, Yellow, and Green.

[TN_Mapper]

@RezaRaoofi ya, that’s pretty cool. thanks.

However, how would I get values from a cell though to get applied to “Criteria” in the Data Validation screen?

As mentioned, I’m attempting to use those values to create a drop-down list.

The options here are:

1. list from range - that isn’t going to work, as the values are comma-delimited and sit in a cell, or 2) list of items - this is expecting a user to hand-enter a comma delimited list (i was hoping I could programmatically populate the list from a function but it’s looking grim).

[RezaRaoofi]

Dropdown lists in AppSheet can do what Data Validation does in spreadsheets; you do not have to manually enter fixed values as available options; you can populate the items by a list such as a column from a table like this: TableName[ColumnName], or by a list returned from that SPLIT() function.

Check this out for more details: intercom.help - Dropdown from Valid_If Dropdown from Valid_If intercom.help

[RezaRaoofi]

Also you can learn more about lists here:

intercom.help - List Expressions and Aggregates List Expressions and Aggregates intercom.help