Can you concatenate single line text fields?

[ToneiaLane]

I have multiple project forms associated with one project, and each form has a unique single line text field that I'd like to concatenate in one spot. I did this with the other fields that have radio buttons or checkboxes, making reporting much easier. Is this possible with text fields?!

[RandyRoberts]

Short answer, sure!

[ToneiaLane]

Great, but what is the long answer? Lol. I need a calculation that works, my attempts haven't yet been successful.

[skyehansen]

hi Toneia, I don't know if you realize or not, that your question could be seen as a bit ambiguous. You could be talking about a calculated field or a report or something completely different. If you share what you've tried, someone can probably do more to help you tweak it since we'll hopefully be able to better tell what you're asking by what you're using.. Showing us a sample of what actually worked would also help.

[ToneiaLane]

Hi Skye,

I'd be happy to have a solution for a calculated field in a custom form or a report, although I've been trying it on a custom form since that's what I've done for the others, and it gives me one simple field to pull in to my reports. This is how I have the calculated field on my custom form formatted for my concatenated radio dial/checkbox fields;

CONCAT("Other" Communication Topic,{#2 "Other" Communication Topic},{#3 "Other" Communication Topic},{#4 "Other" Communication Topic},{#5 "Other" Communication Topic})

It doesn't seem to be yielding me the text from my text field(s).

[skyehansen]

and just to clarify, is this calculation you're sharing the one that works, or the one that doesn't work? Also, have you clicked on the little checkbox that says "update previous calculations in the background"?

[ToneiaLane]

Sorry that was a bad example, that one does NOT work for single line text fields (says the formula isn't correct and won't let me save), but does work for radio dial/checkboxes.

This one doesn't give me an error in my custom form...

CONCAT({DE:"Other" Communication Topic}, {DE:#2 "Other" Communication Topic}, {DE:#3 "Other" Communication Topic}, {DE:#4 "Other" Communication Topic}, {DE:#5 "Other" Communication Topic})

However, it doesn't produce any text in the field when I test it, it just shows N/A. I did click the little checkbox.

[skyehansen · Accepted solution]

I would try a couple of things right off the bat. First I would try this:

CONCAT({"Other" Communication Topic}, {#2 "Other" Communication Topic}, {#3 "Other" Communication Topic}, {#4 "Other" Communication Topic}, {#5 "Other" Communication Topic})

If that doesn't work, I would rename your fields and try again with new field names. I recommend not putting any special characters like quote marks and hashes in field names. If you wanted to leave those in your field labels for your users to see, that's up to you, but they don't need to live in field names and so they shouldn't. Same goes for question marks, slashes, and ... well, any punctuation really.

[ToneiaLane]

Thanks for the suggestions. FINALLY it's working!!! I removed all punctuation, I tried this: CONCAT({Other Communication Topic},{Other Communication Topic 2},{Other Communication Topic 3},{Other Communication Topic 4},{Other Communication Topic 5}) ....and it reverted it to: CONCAT(Other Communication Topic,Other Communication Topic 2,Other Communication Topic 3,Other Communication Topic 4,Other Communication Topic 5)

Which works! Thank you for helping me get through this, I should've just removed the special characters from the beginning but since they aren't an issue in my other concatenated calculated fields I didn't think that was the problem. What a relief to have this functioning properly, you rock! 😄

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Well done Skye and Toneia,

Wherever possible, I use only letters and spaces in custom parameter names (boring is the new sexy).

That said, adding the DE: prefix usually does the trick, so (scrolling back a bit on this), I suspect you might have missed a # on one of your previous DE: attempts (i.e. {DE:"Other" Communication Topic} instead of {DE:#1 "Other" Communication Topic}), which might then explain why it saved, but you got no results.

Regards,

Doug

[Frank4MSC]

Look at the CONCAT function found here:

https://one.workfront.com/s/document-item?bundleId=the-new-workfront-experience&topicId=Content%2FRe...